THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT  OF 

Blake  Reynolds  Nevius 


THE    FRUIT    OF    THE    TREE 


"No  —  I  shall  have  to  ask  you  to  take  my  word  for  it." 


THE   FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 


BY 

EDITH   WHARTON 


NEW    YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1914 


COPYRIGHT,    1907,    BY    CHARLES    SCRIBNER  S    SONS 


SRLF 

iJRL 

PS 


BOOK  I 


THE 
FRUIT   OF  THE  TREE 


IN  the  surgical  ward  of  the  Hope  Hospital  at  Han- 
aford,  a  nurse  was   bending  over  a  young  man 
whose  bandaged   right  hand  and  arm   lay   stretched 
along  the  bed. 

His  head  stirred  uneasily,  and  slipping  her  arm  be- 
hind him  she  effected  a  professional  readjustment  of 
the  pillows.  "Is  that  better?" 

As  she  leaned  over,  he  lifted  his  anxious  bewildered 
eyes,  deep-sunk  under  ridges  of  suffering.  "I  don't 
s'pose  there's  any  kind  of  a  show  for  me,  is  there  ?"  he 
asked,  pointing  with  his  free  hand — the  stained  seamed 
hand  of  the  mechanic — to  the  inert  bundle  on  the  quilt. 

Her  only  immediate  answer  was  to  wipe  the  damp- 
ness from  his  forehead;  then  she  said:  "We'll  talk 
about  that  to-morrow." 

"Why  not  now?" 

"Because  Dr.  Disbrow  can't  tell  till  the  inflamma- 
tion goes  down." 

"Will  it  go  down  by  to-morrow?" 

"It  will  begin  to,  if  you  don't  excite  yourself  and 
keep  up  the  fever." 

[3] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"  Excite  myself  ?    I — there's  four  of  'em  at  home " 

"Well,  then  there  are  four  reasons  for  keeping  quiet," 
she  rejoined. 

She  did  not  use,  in  speaking,  the  soothing  inflection 
of  her  trade:  she  seemed  to  disdain  to  cajole  or  trick 
the  sufferer.  Her  full  young  voice  kept  its  cool  note  of 
authority,  her  sympathy  revealing  itself  only  in  the 
expert  touch  of  her  hands  and  the  constant  vigilance 
of  her  dark  steady  eyes.  This  vigilance  softened  to 
pity  as  the  patient  turned  his  head  away  with  a  groan. 
His  free  left  hand  continued  to  travel  the  sheet,  clasp- 
ing and  unclasping  itself  in  contortions  of  feverish 
unrest.  It  was  as  though  all  the  anguish  of  his  muti- 
lation found  expression  in  that  lonely  hand,  left 
without  work  in  the  world  now  that  its  mate  was 
useless. 

The  nurse  felt  a  touch  on  her  shoulder,  and  rose  to 
face  the  matron,  a  sharp-featured  woman  with  a  soft 
intonation. 

"This  is  Mr.  Amherst,  Miss  Brent.  The  assistant 
manager  from  the  mills.  He  wishes  to  see  Dillon." 

John  Amherst 's  step  was  singularly  noiseless.  The 
nurse,  sensitive  by  nature  and  training  to  all  physical 
characteristics,  was  struck  at  once  by  the  contrast  be- 
tween his  alert  face  and  figure  and  the  silent  way  in 
which  he  moved.  She  noticed,  too,  that  the  same  con- 
trast was  repeated  in  the  face  itself,  its  spare  energetic 

[4] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

outline,  with  the  high  nose  and  compressed  lips  of  the 
mover  of  men,  being  curiously  modified  by  the  veiled 
inward  gaze  of  the  grey  eyes  he  turned  on  her.  It  was 
one  of  the  interests  of  Justine  Brent's  crowded  yet 
lonely  life  to  attempt  a  rapid  mental  classification  of 
the  persons  she  met;  but  the  contradictions  in  Am- 
herst's  face  baffled  her,  and  she  murmured  inwardly 
"I  don't  know"  as  she  drew  aside  to  let  him  approach 
the  bed.  He  stood  by  her  in  silence,  his  hands  clasped 
behind  him,  his  eyes  on  the  injured  man,  who  lay 
motionless,  as  if  sunk  in  a  lethargy.  The  matron,  at 
the  call  of  another  nurse,  had  minced  away  down  the 
ward,  committing  Amherst  with  a  glance  to  Miss  Brent; 
and  the  two  remained  alone  by  the  bed. 

After  a  pause,  Amherst  moved  toward  the  window 
beyond  the  empty  cot  adjoining  Dillon's.  One  of  the 
white  screens  used  to  isolate  dying  patients  had  been 
placed  against  this  cot,  which  was  the  last  at  that 
end  of  the  ward,  and  the  space  beyond  formed  a 
secluded  corner,  where  a  few  words  could  be  exchanged 
out  of  reach  of  the  eyes  in  the  other  beds. 

"Is  he  asleep?"  Amherst  asked,  as  Miss  Brent 
joined  him. 

Miss  Brent  glanced  at  him  again.  His  voice  be- 
tokened not  merely  education,  but  something  different 
and  deeper — the  familiar  habit  of  gentle  speech;  and 
his  shabby  clothes — carefully  brushed,  but  ill-cut  and 

[5] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

worn  along  the  seams — sat  on  him  easily,  and  with  the 
same  difference. 

"The  morphine  has  made  him  drowsy,"  she  an- 
swered. "The  wounds  were  dressed  about  an  hour 
ago,  and  the  doctor  gave  him  a  hypodermic." 

"The  wounds — how  many  are  there?" 

"Besides  the  hand,  his  arm  is  badly  torn  up  to  the 
elbow." 

Amherst  listened  with  bent  head  and  frowning  brow. 

"What  do  you  think  of  the  case  ?" 

She  hesitated.     "Dr.  Disbrow  hasn't  said " 

"And  it's  not  your  business  to  ? "  He  smiled  slightly. 
"  I  know  hospital  etiquette.  But  I  have  a  particular  rea- 
son for  asking."  He  broke  off  and  looked  at  her  again, 
his  veiled  gaze  sharpening  to  a  glance  of  concentrated 
attention.  "You're  not  one  of  the  regular  nurses,  are 
you  ?  Your  dress  seems  to  be  of  a  different  colour." 

She  smiled  at  the  "seems  to  be,"  which  denoted  a 
tardy  and  imperfect  apprehension  of  the  difference 
between  dark-blue  linen  and  white. 

"No:  I  happened  to  be  staying  at  Hanaford,  and 
hearing  that  they  were  in  want  of  a  surgical  nurse,  I 
offered  my  help." 

Amherst  nodded.  "So  much  the  better.  Is  there 
any  place  where  I  can  say  two  words  to  you  ? " 

"I  could  hardly  leave  the  ward  now,  unless  Mrs. 
Ogan  comes  back." 

[6] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I  don't  care  to  have  you  call  Mrs.  Ogan,"  he  inter- 
posed quickly.  "When  do  you  go  off  duty?" 

She  looked  at  him  in  surprise.  "If  what  you  want 
to  ask  about  is — anything  connected  with  the  manage- 
ment of  things  here — you  know  we're  not  supposed  to 
talk  of  our  patients  outside  of  the  hospital." 

"I  know.  But  I  am  going  to  ask  you  to  break 
through  the  rule — in  that  poor  fellow's  behalf." 

A  protest  wavered  on  her  lip,  but  he  held  her  eyes 
steadily,  with  a  glint  of  good-humour  behind  his  de- 
termination. "When  do  you  go  off  duty?" 

"At  six." 

"I'll  wait  at  the  corner  of  South  Street  and  walk 
a  little  way  with  you.  Let  me  put  my  case,  and  if 
you're  not  convinced  you  can  refuse  to  answer." 

"Very  well,"  she  said,  without  farther  hesitation; 
and  Amherst,  with  a  slight  nod  of  farewell,  passed 
through  the  door  near  which  they  had  been  standing. 


II 


T  IT  THEN  Justine  Brent  emerged  from  the  Hope 
T  T  Hospital  the  October  dusk  had  fallen  and  the 
wide  suburban  street  was  almost  dark,  except  when 
the  illuminated  bulk  of  an  electric  car  flashed  by  under 
the  maples. 

She  crossed  the  tracks  and  approached  the  narrower 
[7] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

thoroughfare  where  Amherst  awaited  her.  He  hung 
back  a  moment,  and  she  was  amused  to  see  that  he 
failed  to  identify  the  uniformed  nurse  with  the  girl  in 
her  trim  dark  dress,  soberly  complete  in  all  its  acces- 
sories, who  advanced  to  him,  smiling  under  her  little  veil. 

"Thank  you,"  he  said  as  he  turned  and  walked  be- 
side her.  "Is  this  your  way?" 

"I  am  staying  in  Oak  Street.  But  it's  just  as  short 
to  go  by  Maplewood  Avenue." 

"Yes;  and  quieter." 

For  a  few  yards  they  walked  on  in  silence,  their  long 
steps  falling  naturally  into  time,  though  Amherst  was 
somewhat  taller  than  his  companion. 

At  length  he  said:  "I  suppose  you  know  nothing 
about  the  relation  between  Hope  Hospital  and  the 
Westmore  Mills." 

"Only  that  the  hospital  was  endowed  by  one  of  the 
Westmore  family." 

"Yes;  an  old  Miss  Hope,  a  great-aunt  of  West- 
more's.  But  there  is  more  than  that  between  them — 
all  kinds  of  subterranean  passages."  He  paused,  and 
began  again:  "For  instance,  Dr.  Disbrow  married  the 
sister  of  our  manager's  wife." 

"Your  chief  at  the  mills?" 

"Yes,"  he  said  with  a  slight  grimace.  "So  you  see, 
if  Truscomb — the  manager — thinks  one  of  the  mill- 
hands  is  only  slightly  injured,  it's  natural  that  his 

[8] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

brother-in-law,  Dr.  Disbrow,  should  take  an  optimistic 
view  of  the  case." 

"Natural?     I  don't  know " 

"Don't  you  think  it's  natural  that  a  man  should  be 
influenced  by  his  wife?" 

"Not  where  his  professional  honour  is  concerned." 

Amherst  smiled.  "That  sounds  very  young — if 
you'll  excuse  my  saying  so.  Well,  I  won't  go  on  to 
insinuate  that,  Truscomb  being  high  in  favour  with 
the  Westmores,  and  the  Westmores  having  a  lien  on 
the  hospital,  Disbrow's  position  there  is  also  bound  up 
with  his  taking — more  or  less — the  same  view  as  Trus- 
comb's." 

Miss  Brent  had  paused  abruptly  on  the  deserted 
pavement. 

"No,  don't  go  on — if  you  want  me  to  think  well  of 
you,"  she  flashed  out. 

Amherst  met  the  thrust  composedly,  perceiving,  as 
she  turned  to  face  him,  that  what  she  resented  was  not 
so  much  his  insinuation  against  his  superiors  as  his 
allusion  to  the  youthfulness  of  her  sentiments.  She 
was,  in  fact,  as  he  now  noticed,  still  young  enough  to 
dislike  being  excused  for  her  youth.  In  her  severe 
uniform  of  blue  linen,  her  dusky  skin  darkened  by  the 
nurse's  cap,  and  by  the  pale  background  of  the  hos- 
pital walls,  she  had  seemed  older,  more  competent  and 
experienced;  but  he  now  saw  how  fresh  was  the  pale 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

curve  of  her  cheek,  and  how  smooth  the  brow  clasped 
in  close  waves  of  hair. 

"I  began  at  the  wrong  end,"  he  acknowledged. 
"But  let  me  put  Dillon's  case  before  you  dismiss  me." 

She  softened.  "It  is  only  because  of  my  interest  in 
that  poor  fellow  that  I  am  here " 

"Because  you  think  he  needs  help — and  that  you 
can  help  him?" 

But  she  held  back  once  more.  "Please  tell  me  about 
him  first,"  she  said,  walking  on. 

Amherst  met  the  request  with  another  question. 
"I  wonder  how  much  you  know  about  factory  life  ?" 

"Oh,  next  to  nothing.  Just  what  I've  managed  to 
pick  up  in  these  two  days  at  the  hospital." 

He  glanced  at  her  small  determined  profile  under  its 
dark  roll  of  hair,  and  said,  half  to  himself:  "That 
might  be  a  good  deal." 

She  took  no  notice  of  this,  and  he  went  on:  "Well, 
I  won't  try  to  put  the  general  situation  before  you, 
though  Dillon's  accident  is  really  the  result  of  it.  He 
works  in  the  carding  room,  and  on  the  day  of  the  acci- 
dent his  'card'  stopped  suddenly,  and  he  put  his  hand 
behind  him  to  get  a  tool  he  needed  out  of  his  trouser- 
pocket.  He  reached  back  a  little  too  far,  and  the  card 
behind  him  caught  his  hand  in  its  million  of  diamond- 
pointed  wires.  Truscomb  and  the  overseer  of  the  room 
maintain  that  the  accident  was  due  to  his  own  care- 

[  10] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

lessness;  but  the  hands  say  that  it  was  caused  by  the 
fact  of  the  cards  being  too  near  together,  and  that  just 
such  an  accident  was  bound  to  happen  sooner  or  later." 

Miss  Brent  drew  an  eager  breath.  "And  what  do 
you  say?" 

"That  they're  right:  the  carding-room  is  shame- 
fully overcrowded.  Dillon  hasn't  been  in  it  long — he 
worked  his  way  up  at  the  mills  from  being  a  bobbin- 
boy — and  he  hadn't  yet  learned  how  cautious  a  man 
must  be  in  there.  The  cards  are  so  close  to  each  other 
that  even  the  old  hands  run  narrow  risks,  and  it  takes 
the  cleverest  operative  some  time  to  learn  that  he  must 
calculate  every  movement  to  a  fraction  of  an  inch." 

"But  why  do  they  crowd  the  rooms  in  that  way  ?" 

"To  get  the  maximum  of  profit  out  of  the  minimum 
of  floor-space.  It  costs  more  to  increase  the  floor-space 
than  to  maim  an  operative  now  and  then." 

"I  see.     Go  on,"  she  murmured. 

"That's  the  first  point;  here  is  the  second.  Dr. 
Disbrow  told  Truscomb  this  morning  that  Dillon's 
hand  would  certainly  be  saved,  and  that  he  might  get 
back  to  work  in  a  couple  of  months  if  the  company 
would  present  him  with  an  artificial  finger  or  two." 

Miss  Brent  faced  him  with  a  flush  of  indignation. 
"Mr.  Amherst — who  gave  you  this  version  of  Dr.  Dis- 
brow's  report?" 

"The  manager  himself." 

[11] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Verbally?" 

"No — he  showed  me  Disbrow's  letter." 

For  a  moment  or  two  they  walked  on  silently  through 
the  quiet  street;  then  she  said,  in  a  voice  still  stirred 
with  feeling:  "As  I  told  you  this  afternoon,  Dr.  Dis- 
brow  has  said  nothing  in  my  hearing." 

"And  Mrs.  Ogan?" 

"Oh,  Mrs.  Ogan — "  Her  voice  broke  in  a  ripple  of 
irony.  "Mrs.  Ogan  'feels  it  to  be  such  a  beautiful 
dispensation,  my  dear,  that,  owing  to  a  death  that  very 
morning  in  the  surgical  ward,  we  happened  to  have  a 
bed  ready  for  the  poor  man  within  three  hours  of  the 
accident. ' '  She  had  exchanged  her  deep  throat-tones 
for  a  high  reedy  note  which  perfectly  simulated  the 
matron's  lady-like  inflections. 

Amherst,  at  the  change,  turned  on  her  with  a  boyish 
burst  of  laughter:  she  joined  in  it,  and  for  a  moment 
they  were  blent  in  that  closest  of  unions,  the  discovery 
of  a  common  fund  of  humour. 

She  was  the  first  to  grow  grave.  "That  three  hours' 
delay  didn't  help  matters — how  is  it  there  is  no  emer- 
gency hospital  at  the  mills  ?  " 

Amherst  laughed  again,  but  in  a  different  key. 
"That's  part  of  the  larger  question,  which  we  haven't 
time  for  now."  He  waited  a  moment,  and  then  added: 
"You've  not  yet  given  me  your  own  impression  of 
Dillon's  case." 

[  12] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"You  shall  have  it,  if  you  saw  that  letter.  Dillon 
will  certainly  lose  his  hand — and  probably  the  whole 
arm."  She  spoke  with  a  thrilling  of  her  slight  frame 
that  transformed  the  dispassionate  professional  into  a 
girl  shaken  with  indignant  pity. 

Amherst  stood  still  before  her.  "  Good  God !  Never 
anything  but  useless  lumber?" 

"Never " 

"And  he  won't  die?" 

"Alas!" 

"He  has  a  consumptive  wife  and  three  children. 
She  ruined  her  health  swallowing  cotton-dust  at  the 
factory,"  Amherst  continued. 

"So  she  told  me  yesterday." 

He  turned  in  surprise.  "You've  had  a  talk  with  her  ?  " 

"I  went  out  to  Westmore  last  night.  I  was  haunted 
by  her  face  when  she  came  to  the  hospital.  She  looks 
forty,  but  she  told  me  she  was  only  twenty-six."  Miss 
Brent  paused  to  steady  her  voice.  "It's  the  curse  of 
my  trade  that  it's  always  tempting  me  to  interfere  in 
cases  where  I  can  do  no  possible  good.  The  fact  is, 
I'm  not  fit  to  be  a  nurse — I  shall  live  and  die  a  wretched 
sentimentalist!"  she  ended,  with  an  angry  dash  at  the 
tears  on  her  veil. 

Her  companion  walked  on  in  silence  till  she  had 
regained  her  composure.  Then  he  said :  "What  did  you 
think  of  Westmore?" 

[  13] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I  think  it's  one  of  the  worst  places  I  ever  saw — and 
I  am  not  unused  to  slums.  It  looks  so  dead.  The 
slums  of  big  cities  are  much  more  cheerful." 

He  made  no  answer,  and  after  a  moment  she  asked : 
"Does  the  cotton-dust  always  affect  the  lungs?" 

"It's  likely  to,  where  there  is  the  least  phthisical  ten- 
dency. But  of  course  the  harm  could  be  immensely 
reduced  by  taking  up  the  old  rough  floors  which  hold 
the  dust,  and  by  thorough  cleanliness  and  ventilation." 

"What  does  the  company  do  in  such  cases?  Where 
an  operative  breaks  down  at  twenty-five?" 

"The  company  says  there  was  a  phthisical  tendency." 

"And  will  they  give  nothing  in  return  for  the  two 
lives  they  have  taken?" 

"They  will  probably  pay  for  Dillon's  care  at  the 
hospital,  and  they  have  taken  the  wife  back  as  a 
scrubber." 

"To  clean  those  uncleanable  floors?  She's  not  fit 
for  it!" 

"She  must  work,  fit  for  it  or  not;  and  there  is  less 
strain  in  scrubbing  than  in  bending  over  the  looms  or 
cards.  The  pay  is  lower,  of  course,  but  she's  very 
grateful  for  being  taken  back  at  all,  now  that  he's  no 
longer  a  first-class  worker." 

Miss  Brent's  face  glowed  with  a  fine  wrath.  "She 
can't  possibly  stand  more  than  two  or  three  months  of 
it  without  breaking  down!" 

[14] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Well,  you  see  they've  told  her  that  in  less  than  that 
time  her  husband  will  be  at  work  again." 

"And  what  will  the  company  do  for  them  when  the 
wife  is  a  hopeless  invalid,  and  the  husband  a  cripple  ? " 

Amherst  again  uttered  the  dry  laugh  with  which  he 
had  met  her  suggestion  of  an  emergency  hospital.  "I 
know  what  I  should  do  if  I  could  get  anywhere  near 
Dillon — give  him  an  overdose  of  morphine,  and  let  the 
widow  collect  his  life-insurance,  and  make  afresh  start." 

She  looked  at  him  curiously.  "Should  you,  I  won- 
der?" 

"If  I  saw  tne  suffering  as  you  see  it,  and  knew  the 
circumstances  as  I  know  them,  I  believe  I  should  feel 
justified — "  He  broke  off.  "In  your  work,  don't  you 
ever  feel  tempted  to  set  a  poor  devil  free  ? " 

She  mused.  "One  might.  .  .  but  perhaps  the  pro- 
fessional instinct  to  save  would  always  come  first." 

"To  save — what?  When  all  the  good  of  life  is 
gone?" 

"I  daresay,"  she  sighed,  "poor  Dillon  would  do  it 
himself  if  he  could — when  he  realizes  that  all  the  good 
is  gone." 

"Yes,  but  he  can't  do  it  himself;  and  it's  the  irony 
of  such  cases  that  his  employers,  after  ruining  his  life, 
will  do  all  they  can  to  patch  up  the  ruins." 

"But  that  at  least  ought  to  count  in  their  favour." 

"Perhaps;  if — "  He  paused,  as  though  reluctant 
[15] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

to  lay  himself  open  once  more  to  the  charge  of  un- 
charitableness;  and  suddenly  she  exclaimed,  looking 
about  her:  "I  didn't  notice  we  had  walked  so  far  down 
Maplewood  Avenue!" 

They  had  turned  a  few  minutes  previously  into  the 
wide  thoroughfare  crowning  the  high  ground  which  is 
covered  by  the  residential  quarter  of  Hanaford.  Here 
the  spacious  houses,  withdrawn  behind  shrubberies  and 
lawns,  revealed  in  their  silhouettes  every  form  of  archi- 
tectural experiment,  from  the  symmetrical  pre-Revo- 
lutionary  structure,  with  its  classic  portico  and  clipped 
box-borders,  to  the  latest  outbreak  in  boulders  and 
Moorish  tiles. 

Amherst  followed  his  companion's  glance  with  sur- 
prise. "We  have  gone  a  block  or  two  out  of  our  way. 
I  always  forget  where  I  am  when  I'm  talking  about 
anything  Jhat  interests  me." 

Miss  Brent  looked  at  her  watch.  "My  friends  don't 
dine  till  seven,  and  I  can  get  home  in  time  by  taking  a 
Grove  Street  car,"  she  said 

"If  you  don't  mind  walking  a  little  farther  you  can 
take  a  Liberty  Street  car  instead.  They  run  oftener, 
and  you  will  get  home  just  as  soon." 

She  made  a  gesture  of  assent,  and  as  they  walked  on 
he  continued:  "I  haven't  yet  explained  why  I  am  so 
anxious  to  get  an  unbiassed  opinion  of  Dillon's  case." 

She  looked  at  him  in  surprise.  "What  you've  told 
[16] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

me  about  Dr.  Disbrow  and   your  manager  is  surely 
enough." 

"Well,  hardly,  considering  that  I  am  Truscomb's 
subordinate.  I  shouldn't  have  committed  a  breach  of 
professional  etiquette,  or  asked  you  to  do  so,  if  I  hadn't 
a  hope  of  bettering  things;  but  I  have,  and  that  is  why 
I've  held  on  at  Westmore  for  the  last  few  months,  in- 
stead of  getting  out  of  it  altogether." 

"I'm  glad  of  that,"  she  said  quickly. 

"The  owner  of  the  mills — young  Richard  Westmore 
— died  last  winter,"  he  went  on,  "and  my  hope — it's 
no  more — is  that  the  new  broom  may  sweep  a  little 
cleaner." 

"Who  is  the  new  broom?" 

"Westmore  left  everything  to  his  widow,  and  she  is 
coming  here  to-morrow  to  look  into  the  management  of 
the  mills." 

"Coming?     She  doesn't  live  here,  then?" 

"  At  Hanaford  ?    Heaven  forbid !     It's  an  anomaly 
nowadays  for  the  employer  to  live  near  the  employed. 
The  Westmores  have  always  lived  in  New  York — and » 
I  believe  they  have  a  big  place  on  Long  Island." 

"Well,  at  any  rate  she  is  coming,  and  that  ought  to 
be  a  good  sign.  Did  she  never  show  any  interest  in 
the  mills  during  her  husband's  life?" 

"Not  as  far  as  I  know.  I've  been  at  Westmore 
three  years,  and  she's  not  been  seen  there  in  my  time 

[17] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

She  is  very  young,  and  Westmore  himself  didn't  care. 
It  was  a  case  of  inherited  money.  He  drew  the  divi- 
dends, and  Truscomb  did  the  rest." 

Miss  Brent  reflected.  "I  don't  know  much  about 
the  constitution  of  companies — but  I  suppose  Mrs. 
Westmore  doesn't  unite  all  the  offices  in  her  own  per- 
son. Is  there  no  one  to  stand  between  Truscomb  and 
the  operatives?" 

"  Oh,  the  company,  on  paper,  shows  the  usual  official 
hierarchy.  Richard  Westmore,  of  course,  was  presi- 
dent, and  since  his  death  the  former  treasurer — Halford 
Gaines — has  replaced  him,  and  his  son,  Westmore 
Gaines,  has  been  appointed  treasurer.  You  can  see 
by  the  names  that  it's  all  in  the  family.  Halford  Gaines 
married  a  Miss  Westmore,  and  represents  the  clan  at 
Hanaford — leads  society,  and  keeps  up  the  social  credit 
of  the  name.  As  treasurer,  Mr.  Halford  Gaines  kept 
strictly  to  his  special  business,  and  always  refused  to 
interfere  between  Truscomb  and  the  operatives.  As 
president  he  will  probably  follow  the  same  policy,  the 
•  more  so  as  it  fits  in  with  his  inherited  respect  for  the 
status  quo,  and  his  blissful  ignorance  of  economics." 

"  And  the  new  treasurer — young  Gaines  ?  Is  there  no 
hope  of  his  breaking  away  from  the  family  tradition  ?" 

"Westy  Gaines  has  a  better  head  than  his  father; 
but  he  hates  Hanaford  and  the  mills,  and  his  chief  ob- 
ject in  life  is  to  be  taken  for  a  New  Yorker.  So  far  he 

[18] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

hasn't  been  here  much,  except  for  the  quarterly  meet- 
ings, and  his  routine  work  is  done  by  another  cousin 
— you  perceive  that  Westmore  is  a  nest  of  nepotism." 

Miss  Brent's  work  among  the  poor  had  developed  N 
her  interest  in  social  problems,  and  she  followed  these 
details  attentively. 

"Well,  the  outlook  is  not  encouraging,  but  perhaps 
Mrs.  Westmore 's  coming  will  make  a  change.  I  sup- 
pose she  has  more  power  than  any  one." 

"She  might  have,  if  she  chose  to  exert-  it,  for  her 
husband  was  really  the  whole  company.  The  official 
cousins  hold  only  a  few  shares  apiece." 

"Perhaps,  then,  her  visit  will  open  her  eyes.  Who 
knows  but  poor  Dillon's  case  may  help  others — prove  a 
beautiful  dispensation,  as  Mrs.  Ogan  would  say?" 

"It  does  come  terribly  pat  as  an  illustration  of  some 
of  the  abuses  I  want  to  have  remedied.  The  difficulty 
will  be  to  get  the  lady's  ear.  That's  her  house  we're 
coming  to,  by  the  way." 

An  electric  street-lamp  irradiated  the  leafless  trees 
and  stone  gate-posts  of  the  building  before  them. 
Though  gardens  extended  behind  it,  the  house  stood 
so  near  the  pavement  that  only  two  short  flights  of  steps 
intervened  between  the  gate-posts  and  the  portico. 
Light  shone  from  every  window  of  the  pompous  rusti- 
cated fagade — in  the  turreted  "Tuscan  villa"  style  of 
the  'fifties — and  as  Miss  Brent  and  Amherst  approached, 
[  19] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

their  advance  was  checked  by  a  group  of  persons  who 
were  just  descending  from  two  carriages  at  the  door. 

The  lamp-light  showed  every  detail  of  dress  and 
countenance  in  the  party,  which  consisted  of  two  men, 
one  slightly  lame,  with  a  long  white  moustache  and  a 
distinguished  nose,  the  other  short,  lean  and  profes- 
sional, and  of  two  ladies  and  their  laden  attendants. 

"Why,  that  must  be  her  party  arriving!"  Miss  Brent 
exclaimed;  and  as  she  spoke  the  younger  of  the  two 
ladies,  turning  back  to  her  maid,  exposed  to  the  glare 
of  the  electric  light  a  fair  pale  face  shadowed  by  the 
projection  of  her  widow's  veil. 

"Is  that  Mrs.  Westmore?"  Miss  Brent  whispered; 
and  as  Amherst  muttered:  "I  suppose  so;  I've  never 

seen  her "  she  continued  e*citedly:   "She  looks  so 

like — do  you  know  what  her  name  was  before  she 
married?" 

He  drew  his  brows  together  in  a  hopeless  effort  of  re- 
membrance. "I  don't  know — I  must  have  heard — but 
I  never  can  recall  people's  names." 

"That's  bad,  for  a  leader  of  men!"  she  said  mock- 
ingly, and  he  answered,  as  though  touched  on  a  sore 
point:  "I  mean  people  who  don't  count.  I  never 
forget  an  operative's  name  or  face." 

"One  can  never  tell  who  may  be  going  to  count," 
she  rejoined  sententiously. 

He  dwelt  on  this  in  silence  while  they  walked  on 
[20] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

catching  as  they  passed  a  glimpse  of  the  red-carpeted 
Westmore  hall  on  which  the  glass  doors  were  just 
being  closed.  At  length  he  roused  himself  to  ask: 
"Does  Mrs.  Westmore  look  like  some  one  you  know?" 

"I  fancied  so — a  girl  who  was  at  the  Sacred  Heart 
in  Paris  with  me.  But  isn't  this  my  corner?"  she  ex- 
claimed, as  they  turned  into  another  street,  down  which 
a  laden  car  was  descending. 

Its  approach  left  them  time  for  no  more  than  a 
hurried  hand-clasp,  and  when  Miss  Brent  had  been 
absorbed  into  the  packed  interior  her  companion,  as 
his  habit  was,  stood  for  a  while  where  she  had  left  him, 
gazing  at  some  indefinite  point  in  space;  then,  waking 
to  a  sudden  consciousness  of  his  surroundings,  he 
walked  off  toward  the  centre  of  the  town. 

At  the  junction  of  two  business  streets  he  met  an 
empty  car  marked  "Westmore,"  and  springing  into  it,  / 
seated  himself  in  a  corner  and  drew  out  a  pocket  Shake- 
speare. He  read  on,  indifferent  to  his  surroundings, 
till  the  car  left  the  asphalt  streets  and  illuminated  shop- 
fronts  for  a  grey  intermediate  region  of  mud  and 
macadam.  Then  he  pocketed  his  volume  and  sat 
looking  out  into  the  gloom. 

The  houses  grew  less  frequent,  with  darker  gaps  of 

night  between;    and  the  rare  street-lamps  shone  on 

cracked  pavements,  crooked  telegraph-poles,  hoardings 

tapestried  with  patent-medicine  posters,  and  all  the 

[21] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

mean  desolation  of  an  American  industrial  suburb. 
Farther  on  there  came  a  weed-grown  field  or  two,  then 
a  row  of  operatives'  houses,  the  showy  gables  of  the 
"Eldorado"  road-house — the  only  building  in  West- 
more  on  which  fresh  paint  was  freely  lavished — then 
the  company  "store,"  the  machine  shops  and  other  out- 
buildings, the  vast  forbidding  hulk  of  the  factories  loom- 
ing above  the  river-bend,  and  the  sudden  neatness  of  the 
manager's  turf  and  privet  hedges.  The  scene  was  so 
familiar  to  Amherst  that  he  had  lost  the  habit  of  com- 
parison, and  his  absorption  in  the  moral  and  material 
needs  of  the  workers  sometimes  made  him  forget  the 
outward  setting  of  their  lives.  But  to-night  he  recalled 
the  nurse's  comment — "it  looks  so  dead" — and  the 
phrase  roused  him  to  a  fresh  perception  of  the  scene. 
With  sudden  disgust  he  saw  the  sordidness  of  it  all — 
the  poor  monotonous  houses,  the  trampled  grass-banks, 
the  lean  dogs  prowling  in  refuse-heaps,  the  reflection  of 
a  crooked  gas-lamp  in  a  stagnant  loop  of  the  river;  and 
he  asked  himself  how  it  was  possible  to  put  any  sense 
of  moral  beauty  into  lives  bounded  forever  by  the  low 
horizon  of  the  factory.  There  is  a  fortuitous  ugliness 
that  has  life  and  hope  in  it:  the  ugliness  of  overcrowded 
city  streets,  of  the  rush  and  drive  of  packed  activities; 
but  this  out-spread  meanness  of  the  suburban  working 
colony,  uncircumscribed  by  any  pressure  of  surrounding 
life,  and  sunk  into  blank  acceptance  of  its  isolation,  its 
[22] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

banishment  from  beauty  and  variety  and  surprise, 
seemed  to  Amherst  the  very  negation  of  hope  and  life. 

"She's  right,"  he  mused — "it's  dead — stone  dead: 
there  isn't  a  drop  of  wholesome  blood  left  in  it." 

The  Moosuc  River  valley,  in  the  hollow  of  which, 
for  that  river's  sake,  the  Westmore  mills  had  been 
planted,  lingered  in  the  memory  of  pre-industrial  Hana- 
ford  as  the  pleasantest  suburb  of  the  town.  Here,  be- 
yond a  region  of  orchards  and  farm-houses,  several 
"leading  citizens"  had  placed,  above  the  river-bank, 
their  prim  wood-cut  "residences,"  with  porticoes  and 
terraced  lawns;  and  from  the  chief  of  these,  Hopewood, 
brought  into  the  Westmore  family  by  the  Miss  Hope 
who  had  married  an  earlier  Westmore,  the  grim  mill- 
village  had  been  carved.  The  pillared  "residences" 
had,  after  this,  inevitably  fallen  to  base  uses;  but  the 
old  house  at  Hopewood,  in  its  wooded  grounds,  re- 
mained, neglected  but  intact,  beyond  the  first  bend  of 
the  river,  deserted  as  a  dwelling  but  "held"  in  anticipa- 
tion of  rising  values,  when  the  inevitable  growth  of 
Westmore  should  increase  the  demand  for  small  build- 
ing lots.  Whenever  Amherst's  eyes  were  refreshed  by 
the  hanging  foliage  above  the  roofs  of  Westmore,  he 
longed  to  convert  the  abandoned  country-seat  into  a 
park  and  playground  for  the  mill-hands;  but  he  knew 
that  the  company  counted  on  the  gradual  sale  of  Hope- 
wood  as  a  source  of  profit.  No — the  mill-town  would 
[23] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

not  grow  beautiful  as  it  grew  larger— rather,  in  obedience 
to  the  grim  law  of  industrial  prosperity,  it  would  soon 
lose  its  one  lingering  grace  and  spread  out  in  unmiti- 
gated ugliness,  devouring  green  fields  and  shaded 
slopes  like  some  insect-plague  consuming  the  land. 
The  conditions  were  familiar  enough  to  Amherst;  and 
their  apparent  inevitableness  mocked  the  hopes  he  had 
based  on  Mrs.  Westmore's  arrival. 

"Where  every  stone  is  piled  on  another,  through  the 
whole  stupid  structure  of  selfishness  and  egotism,  how 
can  one  be  pulled  out  without  making  the  whole  thing 
topple?  And  whatever  they're  blind  to,  they  always 
see  that,"  he  mused,  reaching  up  for  the  strap  of  the  car. 

He  walked  a  few  yards  beyond  the  manager's  house, 
and  turned  down  a  side  street  lined  with  scattered  cot- 
tages. Approaching  one  of  these  by  a  gravelled  path 
he  pushed  open  the  door,  and  entered  a  sitting-room 
where  a  green-shaded  lamp  shone  pleasantly  on  book- 
shelves and  a  crowded  writing-table. 

A  brisk  little  woman  in  black,  laying  down  the  even- 
ing paper  as  she  rose,  lifted  her  hands  to  his  tall 
shoulders. 

"Well,  mother,"  he  said,  stooping  to  her  kiss. 

"You're  late,  John,"  she  smiled  back  at  him,  not  re- 
proachfully, but  with  affection. 

She  was  a  wonderfully  compact  and  active  creature, 
with  face  so  young  and  hair  so  white  that  she  looked  as 
[24] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

unreal  as  a  stage  mother  till  a  close  view  revealed  the 
fine  lines  that  experience  had  drawn  about  her  mouth 
and  eyes.  The  eyes  themselves,  brightly  black  and 
glancing,  had  none  of  the  veiled  depths  of  her  son's 
gaze.  Their  look  was  outward,  on  a  world  which  had 
dealt  her  hard  blows  and  few  favours,  but  in  which  her 
interest  was  still  fresh,  amused  and  unabated. 

Amherst  glanced  at  his  watch.  "Never  mind — 
Duplain  will  be  later  still.  I  had  to  go  into  Hanaford, 
and  he  is  replacing  me  at  the  office." 

"So  much  the  better,  dear:  we  can  have  a  minute  to 
ourselves.  Sit  down  and  tell  me  what  kept  you." 

She  picked  up  her  knitting  as  she  spoke,  having  the 
kind  of  hands  that  find  repose  in  ceaseless  small  ac- 
tivities. Her  son  could  not  remember  a  time  when  he 
had  not  seen  those  small  hands  in  motion — shaping 
garments,  darning  rents,  repairing  furniture,  exploring 
the  inner  economy  of  clocks.  "I  make  a  sort  of  rag- 
carpet  of  the  odd  minutes,"  she  had  once  explained 
to  a  friend  who  wondered  at  her  turning  to  her  needle- 
work in  the  moment's  interval  between  other  tasks. 

Amherst  threw  himself  wearily  into  a  chair.  "I  was 
trying  to  find  out  something  about  Dillon's  case,"  he 
said. 

His  mother  turned  a  quick  glance  toward  the  door, 
rose  to  close  it,  and  reseated  herself. 

"Well?" 

[25] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I  managed  to  have  a  talk  with  his  nurse  when  she 
went  off  duty  this  evening." 

"The  nurse  ?     I  wonder  you  could  get  her  to  speak." 

"Luckily  she's  not  the  regular  incumbent,  but  a 
volunteer  who  happened  to  be  here  on  a  visit.  As  it 
was,  I  had  some  difficulty  in  making  her  talk — till  I 
told  her  of  Disbrow's  letter." 

Mrs.  Amherst  lifted  her  bright  glance  from  the 
needles.  "He's  very  bad,  then?" 

"Hopelessly  maimed!" 

She  shivered  and  cast  down  her  eyes.  "Do  you 
suppose  she  really  knows?" 

"She  struck  me  as  quite  competent  to  judge." 

"A  volunteer,  you  say,  here  on  a  visit  ?  What  is  her 
name?" 

He  raised  his  head  with  a  vague  look.  "I  never 
thought  of  asking  her." 

Mrs.  Amherst  laughed.  "How  like  you!  Did  she 
say  with  whom  she  was  staying?" 

"I  think  she  said  in  Oak  Street — but  she  didn't  men- 
tion any  name." 

Mrs.  Amherst  wrinkled  her  brows  thoughtfully.  "I 
wonder  if  she's  not  the, thin  dark  girl  I  saw  the  other 
day  with  Mrs.  Harry  Dressel.  Was  she  tall  and  rather 
handsome?" 

"I  don't  know,"  murmured  Amherst  indifferently. 
As  a  rule  he  was  humorously  resigned  to  his  mother's 
[26] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

habit  of  deserting  the  general  for  the  particular,  and 
following  some  irrelevant  thread  of  association  in  utter 
disregard  of  the  main  issue.  But'  to-night,  preoccupied 
with  his  subject,  and  incapable  of  conceiving  how  any- 
one else  could  be  unaffected  by  it,  he  resented  her  in- 
difference as  a  sign  of  incurable  frivolity. 

"How  she  can  live  close  to  such  suffering  and  forget 
it!"  was  his  thought;  then,  with  a  movement  of  self- 
reproach,  he  remembered  that  the  work  flying  through 
her  fingers  was  to  take  shape  as  a  garment  for  one  of 
the  infant  Dillons.  "She  takes  her  pity  out  in  action, 
like  that  quiet  nurse,  who  was  as  cool  as  a  drum-major 
till  she  took  off  her  uniform — and  then!"  His  face 
softened  at  the  recollection  of  the  girl's  outbreak. 
Much  as  he  admired,  in  theory,  the  woman  who  kept 
a  calm  exterior  in  emergencies,  he  had  all  a  man's 
desire  to  know  that  the  springs  of  feeling  lay  close  to 
the  unruffled  surface. 

Mrs.  Amherst  had  risen  and  crossed  over  to  his  chair. 
She  leaned  on  it  a  moment,  pushing  the  tossed  brown 
hair  from  his  forehead. 

"John,  have  you  considered  what  you  mean  to  do  next  ?" 

He  threw  back  his  head  to  meet  her  gaze. 

"About  this  Dillon  case,"  she  continued.  "How 
are  all  these  investigations  going  to  help  you?" 

Their  eyes  rested  on  each  other  for  a  moment;  then  he 
said  coldly :  "You  are  afraid  I  am  going  to  lose  my  place." 
[27] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

She  flushed  like  a  girl  and  murmured:  "It's  not  the 
kind  of  place  I  ever  wanted  to  see  you  in!" 

"I  know  it,"  he  returned  in  a  gentler  tone,  clasping 
one  of  the  hands  on  his  chair-back.  "I  ought  to  have 
followed  a  profession,  like  my  grandfather;  but  my 
father's  blood  was  too  strong  in  me.  I  should  never 
have  been  content  as  anything  but  a  working-man." 

"How  can  you  call  your  father  a  working-man  ?  He 
had  a  genius  for  mechanics,  and  if  he  had  lived  he  would 
have  been  as  great  in  his  way  as  any  statesman  or  lawyer." 

Amherst  smiled.  "Greater,  to  my  thinking;  but 
he  gave  me  his  hard-working  hands  without  the  genius 
to  create  with  them.  I  wish  I  had  inherited  more  from 
him,  or  less;  but  I  must  make  the  best  of  what  I  am, 
rather  than  try  to  be  somebody  else."  He  laid  her 
hand  caressingly  against  his  cheek.  "  It's  hard  on  you, 
mother — but  you  must  bear  with  me." 

"I  have  never  complained,  John;  but  now  you've 
chosen  your  work,  it's  natural  that  I  should  want  you 
to  stick  to  it." 

He  rose  with  an  impatient  gesture.  "Never  fear;  I 
could  easily  get  another  job " 

"What  ?  If  Truscomb  black-listed  you  ?  Do  you  for- 
get that  Scotch  overseer  who  was  here  when  we  came  ?  " 

"And  whom  Truscomb  hounded  out  of  the  trade? 
I  remember  him,"  said  Amherst  grimly;    "but  I  have 
an  idea  I  am  going  to  do  the  hounding  this  time." 
[28] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

His  mother  sighed,  but  her  reply  was  cut  short  by 
the  noisy  opening  of  the  outer  door.  Amherst  seemed 
to  hear  the  sound  with  relief.  "There's  Duplain,"  he 
said,  going  into  the  passage;  but  on  the  threshold  he 
encountered,  not  the  young  Alsatian  overseer  who 
boarded  with  them,  but  a  small  boy  who  said  breath- 
lessly: "Mr.  Truscomb  wants  you  to  come  down 
bimeby." 

"  This  evening  ?     To  the  office  ?  " 

"No— he's  sick  a-bed." 

The  blood  rushed  to  Amherst's  face,  and  he  had  to 
press  his  lips  close  to  check  an  exclamation.  "Say 
I'll  come  as  soon  as  I've  had  supper,"  he  said. 

The  boy  vanished,  and  Amherst  turned  back  to  the 
sitting-room.  "Truscomb's  ill — he  has  sent  for  me; 
and  I  saw  Mrs.  Westmore  arriving  tonight!  Have 
supper,  mother — we  won't  wait  for  Duplain."  His 
face  still  glowed  with  excitement,  and  his  eyes  were 
dark  with  the  concentration  of  his  inward  vision. 

"Oh,  John,  John!"  Mrs.  Amherst  sighed,  crossing 
the  passage  to  the  kitchen. 


Ill 


AT  the  manager's  door  Amherst  was  met  by  Mrs. 
Truscomb,  a  large  flushed  woman  in  a  soiled 
wrapper  and  diamond  earrings. 
[29] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Mr.  Truscomb's  very  sick.  He  ought  not  to  see 
you.  The  doctor  thinks — "  she  began. 

Dr.  Disbrow,  at  this  point,  emerged  from  the  sitting- 
room.  He  was  a  pale  man,  with  a  beard  of  mixed 
grey-and-drab,  and  a  voice  of  the  same  indeterminate 
quality. 

"Good  evening,  Mr.  Amherst.  Truscomb  is  pretty 
poorly — on  the  edge  of  pneumonia,  I'm  afraid.  As  he 
seems  anxious  to  see  you  I  think  you'd  better  go  up  for 
two  minutes — not  more,  please."  He  paused,  and 
went  on  with  a  smile:  "You  won't  excite  him,  of  course 
— nothing  unpleasant " 

"He's  worried  himself  sick  over  that  wretched  Dil- 
lon," Mrs.  Truscomb  interposed,  draping  her  wrapper 
majestically  about  an  indignant  bosom. 

"That's  it — puts  too  much  heart  into  his  work.  But 
we'll  have  Dillon  all  right  before  long,"  the  physician 
genially  declared. 

Mrs.  Truscomb,  with  a  reluctant  gesture,  led  Am- 
herst up  the  handsomely  carpeted  stairs  to  the  room 
where  her  husband  lay,  a  prey  to  the  cares  of  office. 
She  ushered  the  young  man  in,  and  withdrew  to  the 
next  room,  where  he  heard  her  coughing  at  intervals, 
as  if  to  remind  him  that  he  was  under  observation. 

The  manager  of  the  Westmore  mills  was  not  the 
type  of  man  that  Amherst's  comments  on  his  superior 
suggested.  As  he  sat  propped  against  the  pillows, 
[30] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

with  a  brick-red  flush  on  his  cheek-bones,  he  seemed 
at  first  glance  to  belong  to  the  innumerable  army  of 
American  business  men — the  sallow,  undersized,  lack- 
lustre drudges  who  have  never  lifted  their  heads  from 
the  ledger.  Even  his  eye,  now  bright  with  fever,  was 
dull  and  non-committal  in  daily  life;  and  perhaps  only 
the  ramifications  of  his  wrinkles  could  have  revealed 
what  particular  ambitions  had  seamed  his  soul. 

"Good  evening,  Amherst.  I'm  down  with  a  con- 
founded cold." 

"I'm  sorry  to  hear  it,"  the  young  man  forced  himself 
to  say. 

"Can't  get  my  breath— that's  the  trouble."  Trus- 
comb  paused  and  gasped.  "I've  just  heard  that  Mrs. 
Westmore  is  here — and  I  want  you  to  go  round — to- 
morrow morning — "  He  had  to  break  off  once  more. 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  Amherst,  his  heart  leaping. 

"Needn't  see  her — ask  for  her  father,  Mr.  Langhope. 
Tell  him  what  the  doctor  says — I'll  be  on  my  legs  in  a 
day  or  two — ask  'em  to  wait  till  I  can  take  'em  over  the 
mills." 

He  shot  one  of  his  fugitive  glances  at  his  assistant, 
and  held  up  a  bony  hand.  "  Wait  a  minute.  On  your 
way  there,  stop  and  notify  Mr.  Gaines.  He  was  to 
meet  them  here.  You  understand  ?" 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  Amherst;  and  at  that  moment  Mrs. 
Truscomb  appeared  on  the  threshold. 
[31] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I  must  ask  you  to  come  now,  Mr.  Amherst,"  she 
began  haughtily;  but  a  glance  from  her  husband  re- 
duced her  to  a  heaving  pink  nonentity. 

"Hold  on,  Amherst.  I  hear  you've  been  in  to  Hana- 
ford.  Did  you  go  to  the  hospital  ?" 

"Ezra — "  his  wife  murmured:  he  looked  through  her. 

"Yes,"  said  Amherst. 

Truscomb's  face  seemed  to  grow  smaller  and  dryer. 
He  transferred  his  look  from  his  wife  to  his  assistant. 

"All  right.  You'll  just  bear  in  mind  that  it's  Dis- 
brow's  business  to  report  Dillon's  case  to  Mrs.  West- 
more  ?  You're  to  confine  yourself  to  my  message.  Is 
that  clear?" 

"Perfectly  clear.  Goodnight,"  Amherst  answered, 
as  he  turned  to  follow  Mrs.  Truscomb. 

That  same  evening,  four  persons  were  seated  under 
the  bronze  chandelier  in  the  red  satin  drawing-room 
of  the  Westmore  mansion.  One  of  the  four,  the  young 
lady  in  widow's  weeds  whose  face  had  arrested  Miss 
Brent's  attention  that  afternoon,  rose  from  a  massively 
upholstered  sofa  and  drifted  over  to  the  fireplace  near 
which  her  father  sat. 

"Didn't  I  tell  you  it  was  awful,  father?"  she  sighed, 
leaning  despondently  against  the  high  carved  mantel- 
piece surmounted  by  a  bronze  clock  in  the  form  of  an 
obelisk. 

[32] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Mr.  Langhope,  who  sat  smoking,  with  one  fault- 
lessly-clad leg  crossed  on  the  other,  and  his  ebony  stick 
reposing  against  the  arm  of  his  chair,  raised  his  clear 
ironical  eyes  to  her  face. 

"As  an  archaeologist,"  he  said,  with  a  comprehensive 
wave  of  his  hand,  "I  find  it  positively  interesting.  I 
should  really  like  to  come  here  and  dig." 

There  were  no  lamps  in  the  room,  and  the  numerous 
gas-jets  of  the  chandelier  shed  their  lights  impartially 
on  ponderously  framed  canvases  of  the  Bay  of  Naples 
and  the  Hudson  in  Autumn,  on  Carrara  busts  and 
bronze  Indians  on  velvet  pedestals. 

"All  this,"  murmured  Mr.  Langhope,  "is  getting  to 
be  as  rare  as  the  giant  sequoias.  In  another  fifty  years 
we  shall  have  collectors  fighting  for  that  Bay  of  Naples." 

Bessy  Westmore  turned  from  him  impatiently.  When 
she  felt  deeply  on  any  subject  her  father's  flippancy 
annoyed  her. 

"  You  can  see,  Maria,"  she  said,  seating  herself  be- 
side the  other  lady  of  the  party,  "why  I  couldn't  possi- 
bly live  here." 

Mrs.  Eustace  Ansell,  immediately  after  dinner,  had 
bent  her  slender  back  above  the  velvet-covered  writing- 
table,  where  an  inkstand  of  Vienna  ormolu  offered  its 
empty  cup  to  her  pen.  Being  habitually  charged  with 
a  voluminous  correspondence,  she  had  foreseen  this 
contingency  and  met  it  by  despatching  her  maid  for 
[33] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

her  own  writing-case,  which  was  now  outspread  before 
her  in  all  its  complex  neatness;  but  at  Bessy's  appeal 
she  wiped  her  pen,  and  turned  a  sympathetic  gaze  on 
her  companion. 

Mrs.  Ansell's  face  drew  all  its  charm  from  its  adapt- 
ability. It  was  a  different  face  to  each  speaker:  now 
kindling  with  irony,  now  gently  maternal,  now  charged 
with  abstract  meditation — and  few  paused  to  reflect 
that,  in  each  case,  it  was  merely  the  mirror  held  up  to 
some  one  else's  view  of  life. 

"It  needs  doing  over,"  she  admitted,  following  the 
widow's  melancholy  glance  about  the  room.  "  But  you 
are  a  spoilt  child  to  complain.  Think  of  having  a 
house  of  your  own  to  come  to,  instead  of  having  to  put  up 
at  the  Hanaford  hotel!" 

Mrs.  Westmore's  attention  was  arrested  by  the  first 
part  of  the  reply. 

"Doing  over?  Why  in  the  world  should  I  do  it 
over?  No  one  could  expect  me  to  come  here  now — 
could  they,  Mr.  Tredegar?"  she  exclaimed,  transferring 
her  appeal  to  the  fourth  member  of  the  party. 

Mr.  Tredegar,  the  family  lawyer,  who  had  deemed  it 
his  duty  to  accompany  the  widow  on  her  visit  of  in- 
spection, was  strolling  up  and  down  the  room  with 
short  pompous  steps,  a  cigar  between  his  lips,  and  his 
arms  behind  him.  He  cocked  his  sparrow-like  head, 
scanned  the  offending  apartment,  and  terminated  his 

[34] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

survey  by  resting  his  eyes  on  Mrs.  Westmore's  charming 
petulant  face. 

"It  all  depends,"  he  replied  axiomatically,  "how 
large  an  income  you  require." 

Mr.  Tredegar  uttered  this  remark  with  the  air  of 
one  who  pronounces  on  an  important  point  in  law: 
his  lightest  observation  seemed  a  decision  handed  down 
from  the  bench  to  which  he  had  never  ascended.  He 
restored  the  cigar  to  his  lips,  and  sought  approval  in 
Mrs.  Ansell's  expressive  eye. 

"Ah,  that's  it,  Bessy.  You've  that  to  remember," 
the  older  lady  murmured,  as  if  struck  by  the  profundity 
of  the  remark. 

Mrs.  Westmore  made  an  impatient  gesture.  "We've 
always  had  money  enough — Dick  was  perfectly  satis- 
fied." Her  voice  trembled  a  little  on  her  husband's 
name.  "And  you  don't  know  what  the  place  is  like 
by  daylight — and  the  people  who  come  to  call!" 

"Of  course  you  needn't  see  any  one  now,  dear,"  Mrs. 
Ansell  reminded  her,  "except  the  Halford  Gaineses." 

"I  am  sure  they're  bad  enough.  Juliana  Gaines  will 
say:  'My  dear,  is  that  the  way  widows'  veils  are  worn 
in  New  York  this  autumn  ? '  and  Halford  will  insist  on 
our  going  to  one  of  those  awful  family  dinners,  all 
Madeira  and  terrapin." 

"It's  too  early  for  terrapin,"  Mrs.  Ansell  smiled  con- 
solingly; but  Bessy  had  reverted  to  her  argument. 
[35] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"  Besides,  what  difference  would  my  coming  here  make  ? 
I  shall  never  understand  anything  about  business,"  she 
declared. 

Mr.  Tredegar  pondered,  and  once  more  removed  his 
cigar.  "The  necessity  has  never  arisen.  But  now 
that  you  find  yourself  in  almost  sole  control  of  a  large 
property " 

Mr.  Langhope  laughed  gently.  "Apply  yourself, 
Bessy.  Bring  your  masterly  intellect  to  bear  on  the 
industrial  problem." 

Mrs.  Ansell  restored  the  innumerable  implements  to 
her  writing-case,  and  laid  her  arm  with  a  caressing 
gesture  on  Mrs.  Westmore's  shoulder.  "Don't  tease 
her.  She's  tired,  and  she  misses  the  baby." 

"I  shall  get  a  telegram  tomorrow  morning,"  ex- 
claimed the  young  mother,  brightening. 

"Of  course  you  will.  'Cicely  has  just  eaten  two 
boiled  eggs  and  a  bowl  of  porridge,  and  is  bearing  up 
wonderfully.' ' 

She  drew  Mrs.  Westmore  persuasively  to  her  feet, 
but  the  widow  refused  to  relinquish  her  hold  on  her 
grievance. 

"You  all  think  I'm  extravagant  and  careless  about 
money,"  she  broke  out,  addressing  the  room  in  gen- 
eral from  the  shelter  of  Mrs.  Ansell 's  embrace;  "but 
I  know  one  thing:  If  I  had  my  way  I  should  begin 
to  economize  by  selling  this  horrible  house,  instead 
[36] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

of   leaving   it  shut  up  from  one  year's  end  to  an- 
other." 

Her  father  looked  up:  proposals  of  retrenchment 
always  struck  him  as  business-like  when  they  did  not 
affect  his  own  expenditure.  "What  do  you  think  of 
that,  eh,  Tredegar?" 

The  eminent  lawyer  drew  in  his  thin  lips.  "From 
the  point  of  view  of  policy,  I  think  unfavourably  of  it," 
he  pronounced. 

Bessy's  face  clouded,  and  Mrs.  Ansell  argued  gently: 
"Really,  it's  too  late  to  look  so  far  into  the  future. 
Remember,  my  dear,  that  we  are  due  at  the  mills  to- 
morrow at  ten." 

The  reminder  that  she  must  rise  early  had  the  effect 
of  hastening  Mrs.  Westmore's  withdrawal,  and  the  two 
ladies,  after  an  exchange  of  goodnights,  left  the  men 
to  their  cigars. 

Mr.  Langhope  was  the  first  to  speak. 

"  Bessy's  as  hopelessly  vague  about  business  as  I  am, 
Tredegar.  Why  the  deuce  Westmore  left  her  every- 
thing outright — but  he  was  only  a  heedless  boy  him- 
self." 

"Yes.  The  way  he  allowed  things  to  go,  it's  a 
wonder  there  was  anything  to  leave.  This  Truscomb 
must  be  an  able  fellow." 

"Devoted  to  Dick's  interests,  I've  always  under- 
stood." 

[37] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"He  makes  the  mills  pay  well,  at  any  rate,  and  that's 
not  so  easy  nowadays.  But  on  general  principles  it's 
as  well  he  should  see  that  we  mean  to  look  into  every- 
thing thoroughly.  Of  course  Halford  Gaines  will  never 
be  more  than  a  good  figure-head,  but  Truscomb  must 
be  made  to  understand  that  Mrs.  Westmore  intends  to 
interest  herself  personally  in  the  business." 

"Oh,  by  all  means — of  course — "  Mr.  Langhope  as- 
sented, his  light  smile  stiffening  into  a  yawn  at  the  mere 
suggestion. 

He  rose  with  an  effort,  supporting  himself  on  his 
stick.  "I  think  I'll  turn  in  myself.  There's  not  a 
readable  book  in  that  God-forsaken  library,  and  I  be- 
lieve Maria  Ansell  has  gone  off  with  my  volume  of 
Loti." 

The  next  morning,  when  Amherst  presented  himself  at 
the  Westmore  door,  he  had  decided  to  follow  his  chief's 
instructions  to  the  letter,  and  ask  for  Mr.  Langhope 
only.  The  decision  had  cost  him  a  struggle,  for  his 
heart  was  big  with  its  purpose;  but  though  he  knew 
that  he  must  soon  place  himself  in  open  opposition  to 
Truscomb,  he  recognized  the  prudence  of  deferring  the 
declaration  of  war  as  long  as  possible 

On  his  round  of  the  mills,  that  morning,  he  had 
paused  in  the  room  where  Mrs.  Dillon  knelt  beside  her 
mop  and  pail,  and  had  found  her,  to  his  surprise,  com- 
[38] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

paratively  reassured  and  cheerful.  Dr.  Disbrow,  she 
told  him,  had  been  in  the  previous  evening,  and  had 
told  her  to  take  heart  about  Jim,  and  left  her  enough 
money  to  get  along  for  a  week — and  a  wonderful  new 
cough-mixture  that  he'd  put  up  for  her  special.  Am- 
herst  found  it  difficult  to  listen  calmly,  with  the  nurse's 
words  still  in  his  ears,  and  the  sight  before  him  of 
Mrs.  Dillon's  lean  shoulder-blades  travelling  painfully 
up  and  down  with  the  sweep  of  the  mop. 

"I  don't  suppose  that  cost  Truscomb  ten  dollars," 
he  said  to  himself,  as  the  lift  lowered  him  to  the  factory 
door;  but  another  voice  argued  that  he  had  no  right  to 
accuse  Disbrow  of  acting  as  liis  brother-in-law's  agent, 
when  the  gift  to  Mrs.  Dillon  might  have  been  prompted 
by  his  own  kindness  of  heart. 

"And  what  prompted  the  lie  about  her  husband? 
Well,  perhaps  he's  an  incurable  optimist,"  he  summed 
up,  springing  into  the  Hanaford  car. 

By  the  time  he  reached  Mrs.  Westmore's  door  his 
wrath  had  subsided,  and  he  felt  that  he  had  himself 
well  in  hand.  He  had  taken  unusual  pains  with  his 
appearance  that  morning — or  rather  his  mother,  learn- 
ing of  the  errand  on  which  Truscomb  had  sent  him, 
had  laid  out  his  carefully-brushed  Sunday  clothes,  and 
adjusted  his  tie  with  skilful  fingers.  "You'd  really  be 
handsome,  Johnny,  if  you  were  only  a  little  vainer," 
she  said,  pushing  him  away  to  survey  the  result;  and 
[39] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

when  he  stared  at  her,  repeating:  "I  never  heard  that 
vanity  made  a  man  better-looking,"  she  responded 
gaily:  "Oh,  up  to  a  certain  point,  because  it  teaches 
him  how  to  use  what  he's  got.  So  remember,"  she 
charged  him,  as  he  smiled  and  took  up  his  hat,  "that 
you're  going  to  see  a  pretty  young  woman,  and  that 
you're  not  a  hundred  years  old  yourself." 

"I'll  try  to,"  he  answered,  humouring  her,  "but  as 
I've  been  forbidden  to  ask  for  her,  I  am  afraid  your 
efforts  will  be  wasted." 

The  servant  to  'whom  he  gave  his  message  showed 
him  into  the  library,  with  a  request  that  he  should  wait; 
and  there,  to  his  surprise,  he  found,  not  the  white- 
moustached  gentleman  whom  he  had  guessed  the  night 
before  to  be  Mr.  Langhope,  but  a  young  lady  in  deep 
black,  who  turned  on  him  a  look  of  not  unfriendly 
enquiry. 

It  was  not  Bessy's  habit  to  anticipate  the  clock;  but 
her  distaste  for  her  surroundings,  and  the  impatience 
to  have  done  with  the  tedious  duties  awaiting  her,  had 
sent  her  downstairs  before  the  rest  of  the  party.  Her 
life  had  been  so  free  from  tiresome  obligations  that  she 
had  but  a  small  stock  of  patience  to  meet  them  with; 
and  already,  after  a  night  at  Hanaford,  she  was  pining 
to  get  back  to  the  comforts  of  her  own  country-house, 
the  soft  rut  of  her  daily  habits,  the  funny  chatter  of 
her  little  girl,  the  long  Stride  of  her  Irish  hunter  across 
[40] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

the  Hempstead  plains — to  everything,  in  short,  that 
made  it  conceivably  worth  while  to  get  up  in  the 
morning. 

The  servant  who  ushered  in  Amherst,  thinking  the 
room  empty,  had  not  mentioned  his  name;  and  for  a 
moment  he  and  his  hostess  examined  each  other  in 
silence,  Bessy  puzzled  at  the  unannounced  appearance 
of  a  good-looking  young  man  who  might  have  been 
some  one  she  had  met  and  forgotten,  while  Amherst 
felt  his  self-possession  slipping  away  into  the  depths  of 
a  pair  of  eyes  so  dark-lashed  and  deeply  blue  that  his 
only  thought  was  one  of  wonder  at  his  previous  indiffer- 
ence to  women's  eyes. 

"Mrs.  Westmore?"  he  asked,  restored  to  self-com- 
mand by  the  perception  that  his  longed-for  opportunity 
was  at  hand;  and  Bessy,  his  voice  confirming  the  in- 
ference she  had  drawn  from  his  appearance,  replied 
with  a  smile:  "I  am  Mrs.  Westmore.  But  if  you  have 
come  to  see  me,  I  ought  to  tell  you  that  in  a  moment  I 
shall  be  obliged  to  go  out  to  our  mills.  I  have  a  busi- 
ness appointment  with  our  manager,  but  if " 

She  broke  off,  gracefully  waiting  for  him  to  insert  his 
explanation. 

"I  have  come  from  the  manager;  I  am  John  Am- 
herst— your  assistant  manager,"  he  added,  as  the  men- 
tion of  his  name  apparently  conveyed  no  enlightenment. 

Mrs.  Westmore's  face  changed,  and  she  let  slip  a 
[41  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

murmur  of  surprise  that  would  certainly  have  flat- 
tered Amherst's  mother  if  she  could  have  heard  it; 
but  it  had  an  opposite  effect  on  the  young  man,  who 
inwardly  accused  himself  of  having  tried  to  disguise 
his  trade  by  not  putting  on  his  everyday  clothes. 

"How  stupid  of  me!  I  took  you  for — I  had  no  idea; 
I  didn't  expect  Mr.  Truscomb  here,"  his  employer 
faltered  in  embarrassment;  then  their  eyes  met  and 
both  smiled. 

"  Mr.  Truscomb  sent  me  to  tell  you  that  he  is  ill,  and 
will  not  be  able  to  show  you  the  mills  today.  I  didn't 
mean  to  ask  for  you — I  was  told  to  give  the  message  to 
Mr.  Langhope,"  Amherst  scrupulously  explained, 
trying  to  repress  the  sudden  note  of  joy  in  his  voice. 

He  was  subject  to  the  unobservant  man's  acute 
flashes  of  vision,  and  Mrs.  Westmore's  beauty  was  like 
a  blinding  light  abruptly  turned  on  eyes  subdued  to 
obscurity.  As  he  spoke,  his  glance  passed  from  her 
face  to  her  hair,  and  remained  caught  in  its  meshes. 
He  had  never  seen  such  hair — it  did  not  seem  to  grow 
in  the  usual  orderly  way,  but  bubbled  up  all  over  her 
head  in  independent  clusters  of  brightness,  breaking, 
about  the  brow,  the  temples,  the  nape,  into  little  ir- 
relevant waves  and  eddies  of  light,  with  dusky  hollows 
of  softness  where  the  hand  might  plunge.  It  takes  but 
the  throb  of  a  nerve  to  carry  such  a  complex  impres- 
sion from  the  eye  to  the  mind,  but  the  object  of  the 
[42] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

i 
throb  had  perhaps  felt  the  electric  flash  of  its  passage, 

for  her  colour  rose  while  Amherst  spoke. 

"Ah,  here  is  my  father  now,"  she  said  with  a  vague 
accent  of  relief,  as  Mr.  Langhope's  stick  was  heard 
tapping  its  way  across  the  hall. 

When  he  entered,  accompanied  by  Mrs.  Ansell,  his 
sharp  glance  of  surprise  at  her  visitor  told  her  that  he 
was  as  much  misled  as  herself,  and  gave  her  a  sense  of 
being  agreeably  justified  in  her  blunder.  "If  father 

thinks  you're  a  gentleman "  her  shining  eyes  seemed 

to  say,  as  she  explained:  "This  is  Mr.  Amherst,  father: 
Mr.  Truscomb  has  sent  him." 

"Mr.  Amherst?"  Langhope,  with  extended  hand, 
echoed  affably  but  vaguely;  and  it  became  clear  that 
neither  Mrs.  Westmore  nor  her  father  had  ever  before 
heard  the  name  of  their  assistant  manager. 

The  discovery  stung  Amherst  to  a  somewhat  un- 
reasoning resentment;  and  while  he  was  trying  to  sub- 
ordinate this  sentiment  to  the  larger  feelings  with  which 
he  had  entered  the  house,  Mrs.  Ansell,  turning  her 
eyes  on  him,  said  gently:  "Your  name  is  unusual.  I 
had  a  friend  named  Lucy  Warne  who  married  a  very 
clever  man — a  mechanical  genius " 

Amherst's  face  cleared.  "My  father  was  a  genius; 
and  my  mother  is  Lucy  Warne,"  he  said,  won  by  the 
soft  look  and  the  persuasive  voice. 

"What  a  delightful  coincidence!  We  were  girls  to- 
[43] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

gether  at  Albany.  You  must  remember  Judge  Warne  ?  " 
she  said,  turning  to  Mr.  Langhope,  who,  twirling  his 
white  moustache,  murmured,  a  shade  less  cordially: 
"Of  course — of  course — delightful — most  interesting." 

Amherst  did  not  notice  the  difference.  His  percep- 
tions were  already  enveloped  in  the  caress  that  ema- 
nated from  Mrs.  AnselPs  voice  and  smile;  and  he  only 
asked  himself  vaguely  if  it  were  possible  that  this  grace- 
ful woman,  with  her  sunny  autumnal  air,  could  really 
be  his  mother's  contemporary.  But  the  question 
brought  an  instant  reaction  of  bitterness. 

"Poverty  is  the  only  thing  that  makes  people  old 
nowadays,"  he  reflected,  painfully  conscious  of  his  own 
share  in  the  hardships  his  mother  had  endured;  and 
when  Mrs.  Ansell  went  on:  "I  must  go  and  see  her — 
you  must  let  me  take  her  by  surprise,"  he  said  stiffly: 
"We  live  out  at  the  mills,  a  long  way  from  here." 

"Oh,  we're  going  there  this  morning,"  she  rejoined, 
unrebuffed  by  what  she  probably  took  for  a  mere 
social  awkwardness,  while  Mrs.  Westmore  interposed: 
"But,  Maria,  Mr.  Truscomb  is  ill,  and  has  sent  Mr. 
Amherst  to  say  that  we  are  not  to  come." 

"Yes:  so  Gaines  has  just  telephoned.  It's  most  un- 
fortunate," Mr.  Langhope  grumbled.  He  too  was 
already  beginning  to  chafe  at  the  uncongenial  exile  of 
Hanaford,  and  he  shared  his  daughter's  desire  to  des- 
patch the  tiresome  business  before  them. 
[44  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Mr.  Tredegar  had  meanwhile  appeared,  and  when 
Amherst  had  been  named  to  him,  and  had  received  his 
Olympian  nod,  Bessy  anxiously  imparted  her  diffi- 
culty. 

"But  how  ill  is  Mr.  Truscomb?  Do  you  think  he 
can  take  us  over  the  mills  tomorrow?"  she  appealed  to 
Amherst. 

"I'm  afraid  not;  I  am  sure  he  can't.  He  has  a 
touch  of  bronchitis." 

This  announcement  was  met  by  a  general  outcry, 
in  which  sympathy  for  the  manager  was  not  the  pre- 
dominating note.  Mrs.  Ansell  saved  the  situation  by 
breathing  feelingly:  "Poor  man!"  and  after  a  decent 
echo  of  the  phrase,  and  a  doubtful  glance  at  her  father, 
Mrs.  Westmore  said:  "If  it's  bronchitis  he  may  be 
ill  for  days,  arid  what  in  the  world  are  we  to  do  ?" 

"Pack  up  and  come  back  later,"  suggested  Mr. 
Langhope  briskly;  but  while  Bessy  sighed  "Oh,  that 
dreadful  journey!"  Mr.  Tredegar  interposed  with  au- 
thority: "One  moment,  Langhope,  please.  Mr.  Am- 
herst, is  Mrs.  Westmore  expected  at  the  mills  ?" 

"Yes,  I  believe  they  know  she  is  coming." 

"Then  I  think,  my  dear,  that  to  go  back  to  New 
York  without  showing  yourself  would,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, be — er — an  error  in  judgment." 

"Good  Lord,  Tredegar,  you  don't  expect  to  keep  us 
kicking  our  heels  here  for  days  ?"  her  father  ejaculated. 
[45] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I  can  certainly  not  afford  to  employ  mine  in  that 
manner  for  even  a  fraction  of  a  day,"  rejoined  the 
lawyer,  always  acutely  resentful  of  the  suggestion  that 
he  had  a  disengaged  moment;  "but  meanwhile " 

"Father,"  Bessy  interposed,  with  an  eagerly  flushing 
cheek, "  don't  you  see  that  the  only  thing  for  us  to  do  is  to 
go  over  the  mills  now — at  once — with  Mr.  Amherst?" 

Mr.  Langhope  stared:  he  was  always  adventurously 
ready  to  unmake  plans,  but  it  flustered  him  to  be  called 
on  to  remake  them.  "Eh — what?  Now — at  once? 
But  Gaines  was  to  have  gone  with  us,  and  how  on  earth 
are  we  to  get  at  him  ?  He  telephoned  me  that,  as  the 
visit  was  given  up,  he  should  ride  out  to  his  farm." 

"Oh,  never  mind — or,  at  least,  all  the  better!"  his 
daughter  urged.  "We  can  see  the  mills  just  as  well 
without  him;  and  we  shall  get  on  so  much  more 
quickly." 

"Well — well — what  do  you  say,  Tredegar?"  mur- 
mured Mr.  Laughope,  allured  by  her  last  argument; 
and  Bessy,  clasping  her  hands,  summed  up  enthusiastic- 
ally: "And  I  shall  understand  so  much  better  without 
a  lot  of  people  trying  to  explain  to  me  at  once!" 

Her  sudden  enthusiasm  surprised  no  one,  for  even 
Mrs.  Ansell,  expert  as  she  was  in  the  interpreting  of 
tones,  set  it  down  to  the  natural  desire  to  have  done  as 
quickly  as  might  be  with  Hanaford. 

"Mrs.  Westmore  kas  left  her  little  girl  at  home," 
[46] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

she  said  to  Amherst,  with  a  smile  intended  to  counter- 
act the  possible  ill-effect  of  the  impression. 

But  Amherst  suspected  no  slight  in  his  employer's 
eagerness  to  visit  Westmore.  His  overmastering  thought 
was  one  of  joy  as  the  fulness  of  his  opportunity  broke 
on  him.  To  show  her  the  mills  himself — to  bring  her 
face  to  face  with  her  people,  unhampered  by  Truscomb's 
jealous  vigilance,  and  Truscomb's  false  explanations; 
to  see  the  angel  of  pity  stir  the  depths  of  those  un- 
fathomable eyes,  when  they  rested,  perhaps  for  the 
first  time,  on  suffering  that  it  was  in  their  power  to 
smile  away  as  easily  as  they  had  smiled  away  his  own 
distrust — all  this  the  wonderful  moment  had  brought 
him,  and  thoughts  and  arguments  thronged  so  hot  on 
his  lips  that  he  kept  silence,  fearing  lest  he  should  say 
too  much. 

IV 

JOHN    AMHERST  was  no  one-sided  idealist.      He 
felt  keenly  the  growing  complexity  of  the  relation 
between  employer  and  worker,  the  seeming  hopeless- 
ness of  permanently  harmonizing  their  claims,  the  re- 
curring necessity  of  fresh  compromises   and   adjust- 
ments.    He  hated  rant,  demagogy,  the  rash  formulating 
of  emotional  theories;   and  his  contempt  for  bad  logic 
and  subjective  judgments  led  him  to  regard  with  dis- 
trust the  panaceas  offered  for  the  cure  of  economic 
[47] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

evils.  But  his  heart  ached  for  the  bitter  throes  with 
which  the  human  machine  moves  on.  He  felt  the 
menace  of  industrial  conditions  when  viewed  collect- 
ively, their  poignancy  when  studied  in  the  individual 
lives  of  the  toilers  among  whom  his  lot  was  cast;  and 
clearly  as  he  saw  the  need  of  a  philosophic  survey  of 
the  question,  he  was  sure  that  only  through  sympathy 
with  its  personal,  human  side  could  a  solution  be 
reached.  The  disappearance  of  the  old  familiar  con- 
tact between  master  and  man  seemed  to  him  one  of  the 
great  wrongs  of  the  new  industrial  situation.  That  the 
breach  must  be  farther  widened  by  the  ultimate  sub- 
stitution of  the  stock-company  for  the  individual  em- 
ployer— a  fact  obvious  to  any  student  of  economic  ten- 
dencies— presented  to  Amherst's  mind  one  of  the  most 
painful  problems  in  the  scheme  of  social  readjustment. 
But  it  was  characteristic  of  him  to  dwell  rather  on  the 
removal  of  immediate  difficulties  than  in  the  contem- 
plation of  those  to  come,  and  while  the  individual  em- 
ployer was  still  to  be  reckoned  with,  the  main  thing 
was  to  bring  him  closer  to  his  workers.  Till  he  entered 
personally  into  their  hardships  and  aspirations — till  he 
learned  what  they  wanted  and  why  they  wanted  it — 
Amherst  believed  that  no  mere  law-making,  however 
enlightened,  could  create  a  wholesome  relation  between 
the  two. 

This  feeling  was  uppermost  as  he  sat  with  Mrs. 
[48] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Westmore  in  the  carriage  which  was  carrying  them  to 
the  mills.  He  had  meant  to  take  the  trolley  back  to 
Westmore,  but  at  a  murmured  word  from  Mr.  Trede- 
gar  Bessy  had  offered  him  a  seat  at  her  side,  leaving 
others  to  follow.  This  culmination  of  his  hopes — 
the  unlooked-for  chance  of  a  half-hour  alone  with  her 
— left  Amherst  oppressed  with  the  swiftness  of  the 
minutes.  He  had  so  much  to  say — so  much  to  prepare 
her  for — yet  how  begin,  while  he  was  in  utter  igno- 
rance of  her  character  and  her  point  of  view,  and  while 
her  lovely  nearness  left  him  so  little  chance  of  perceiv- 
ing anything  except  itself  ? 

But  he  was  not  often  the  victim  of  his  sensations,  and 
presently  there  emerged,  out  of  the  very  consciousness 
of  her  grace  and  her  completeness,  a  clearer  sense  of 
the  conditions  which,  in  a  measure,  had  gone  to  pro- 
duce them.  Her  dress  could  not  have  hung  in  such 
subtle  folds,  her  white  chin  have  nestled  in  such  rich 
depths  of  fur,  the  pearls  in  her  ears  have  given  back  the 
light  from  such  pure  curves,  if  thin  shoulders  in  shape- 
less gingham  had  not  bent,  day  in,  day  out,  above  the 
bobbins  and  carders,  and  weary  ears  throbbed  even  at 
night  with  the  tumult  of  the  looms.  Amherst.  how- 
ever, felt  no  sensational  resentment  at  the  contrast.  He 
had  lived  too  much  with  ugliness  and  want  not  to  be- 
lieve in  human  nature's  abiding  need  of  their  oppo- 
site. He  was  glad  there  was  room  for  such  beauty  in 
[49] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

the  world,  and  sure  that  its  purpose  was  an  ameliorating 
one,  if  only  it  could  be  used  as  a  beautiful  spirit  would 
use  it. 

The  carriage  had  turned  into  one  of  the  nondescript 
thoroughfares,  half  incipient  street,  half  decaying  lane, 
which  dismally  linked  the  mill-village  to  Hanaford. 
Bessy  looked  out  on  the  ruts,  the  hoardings,  the  starved 
trees  dangling  their  palsied  leaves  in  the  radiant  Oc- 
tober light;  then  she  sighed:  "What  a  good  day  for  a 
gallop!" 

Amherst  felt  a  momentary  chill,  but  the  naturalness 
of  the  exclamation  disarmed  him,  and  the  words  called 
up  thrilling  memories  of  his  own  college  days,  when  he 
had  ridden  his  grandfather's  horses  in  the  famous 
hunting  valley  not  a  hundred  miles  from  Hanaford. 

Bessy  met  his  smile  with  a  glow  of  understanding. 
"You  like  riding  too,  I'm  sure?" 

"I  used  to;  but  I  haven't  been  in  the  saddle  for 
years.  Factory  managers  don't  keep  hunters,"  he  said 
laughing. 

Her  murmur  of  embarrassment  showed  that  she  took 
this  as  an  apologetic  allusion  to  his  reduced  condition, 
and  in  his  haste  to  correct  this  impression  he  added: 
"If  I  regretted  anything  in  my  other  life,  it  would  cer- 
tainly be  a  gallop  on  a  day  like  this;  but  I  chose  my 
trade  deliberately,  and  I've  never  been  sorry  for  my 
choice." 

[50] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

He  had  haudly  spoken  when  he  felt  the  inappropriate- 
ness  of  this  avowal;  but  her  prompt  response  showed 
him,  a  moment  later,  that  it  was,  after  all,  the  straight- 
est  way  to  his  end. 

"You  find  the  work  interesting?  I'm  sure  it  must 
be.  You'll  think  me  very  ignorant — my  husband  and 
I  came  here  so  seldom.  .  .  I  feel  as  if  I  ought  to 
know  so  much  more  about  it,"  she  explained. 

At  last  the  note  for  which  he  waited  had  been  struck. 
"Won't  you  try  to — now  you're  here?  There's  so 
much  worth  knowing,"  he  broke  out  impetuously. 

Mrs.  Westmore  coloured,  but  rather  with  surprise 
than  displeasure.  "I'm  very  stupid — I've  no  head  for 
business — but  I  will  try  to,"  she  said. 

"It's  not  business  that  I  mean;  it's  the  personal 
relation — just  the  thing  the  business  point  of  view 
leaves  out.  Financially,  I  don't  suppose  your  mills 
could  be  better  run;  but  there  are  over  seven  hundred 
women  working  in  them,  and  there's  so  much  to  be 
done,  just  for  them  and  their  children." 

He  caught  a  faint  hint  of  withdrawal  in  her  tone. 
"I  have  always  understood  that  Mr.  Truscomb  did 
everything " 

Amherst  flushed;  but  he  was  beyond  caring  for  the 
personal  rebuff.  "Do  you  leave  it  to  your  little  girl's 
nurses  to  do  everything  for  her?"  he  asked. 

Her  surprise  seemed  about  to  verge  on  annoyance: 
[51  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

he  saw  the  preliminary  ruffling  of  the  woman  who  is 
put  to  the  trouble  of  defending  her  dignity.  "Really, 
I  don't  see — "  she  began  with  distant  politeness;  then 
her  face  changed  and  melted,  and  again  her  blood 
spoke  for  her  before  her  lips. 

"I  am  glad  you  told  me  that,  Mr.  Amherst.  Of 
course  I  want  to  do  whatever  I  can.  I  should  like  you 
to  point  out  everything — 

Amherst's  resolve  had  been  taken  while  she  spoke. 
He  would  point  out  everything,  would  stretch  his  op- 
portunity to  its  limit.  All  thoughts  of  personal  pru- 
dence were  flung  to  the  winds-— her  blush  and  tone  had 
routed  the  waiting  policy.  He  would  declare  war  on 
Truscomb  at  once,  and  take  the  chance  of  dismissal. 
At  least,  before  he  went  he  would  have  brought  this 
exquisite  creature  face  to  face  with  the  wrongs  from 
which  her  luxuries  were  drawn,  and  set  in  motion  the 
regenerating  impulses  of  indignation  and  pity.  He  did 
not  stop  to  weigh  the  permanent  advantage  of  this 
course.  His  only  feeling  was  that  the  chance  would 
never  again  be  given  him — that  if  he  let  her  go  away, 
back  to  her  usual  life,  with  eyes  unopened  and  heart 
untouched,  there  would  be  no  hope  of  her  ever  return- 
ing. It  was  far  better  that  he  should  leave  for  good, 
and  that  she  should  come  back,  as  come  back  she 
must,  more  and  more  often,  if  once  she  could  be  made 
to  feel  the  crying  need  of  her  presence. 
[52] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

But  where  was  he  to  begin  ?  How  give  her  even  a 
glimpse  of  the  packed  and  intricate  situation  ? 

"Mrs.  Westmore,"  he  said,  "there's  no  time  to 
say  much  now,  but  before  we  get  to  the  mills  I  want 
to  ask  you  a  favour.  If,  as  you  go  through  them,  you 
see  anything  that  seems  to  need  explaining,  will  you 
let  me  come  and  tell  you  about  it  tonight?  I  say  to- 
night," he  added,  meeting  her  look  of  enquiry,  "be- 
cause later — tomorrow  even — I  might  not  have  the 
chance.  There  are  some  things — a  good  many — in 
the  management  of  the  mills  that  Mr.  Truscomb 
doesn't  see  as  I  do.  I  don't  mean  business  questions: 
wages  and  dividends  and  so  on — those  are  out  of  my 
province.  I  speak  merely  in  the  line  of  my  own  work 
— my  care  of  the  hands,  and  what  I  believe  they  need 
and  don't  get  under  the  present  system.  Naturally,  if 
Mr.  Truscomb  were  well,  I  shouldn't  have  had  this 
chance  of  putting  the  case  to  you;  but  since  it's  come 
my  way,  I  must  seize  it  and  take  the  consequences." 

Even  as  he  spoke,  by  a  swift  reaction  of  thought, 
those  consequences  rose  before  him  in  all  their  serious- 
ness. It  was  not  only,  or  chiefly,  that  he  feared  to  lose 
his  place;  though  he  knew  his  mother  had  not  spoken 
lightly  in  instancing  the  case  of  the  foreman  whom 
Truscomb,  to  gratify  a  personal  spite,  had  for  months 
kept  out  of  a  job  in  his  trade.  And  there  were  special 
reasons  why  Amherst  should  heed  her  warning.  In 
[53] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

adopting  a  manual  trade,  instead  of  one  of  the  gentle- 
manly professions  which  the  men  of  her  family  had 
always  followed,  he  had  not  only  disappointed  her 
hopes,  and  to  a  great  extent  thrown  away  the  benefits 
of  the  education  she  had  pinched  herself  to  give  him, 
but  had  disturbed  all  the  habits  of  her  life  by  removing 
her  from  her  normal  surroundings  to  the  depressing 
exile  of  a  factory-settlement.  However  much  he 
blamed  himself  for  exacting  this  sacrifice,  it  had  been 
made  so  cheerfully  that  the  consciousness  of  it  never 
clouded  his  life  with  his  mother;  but  her  self-efface- 
ment made  him  the  more  alive  to  his  own  obligations, 
and  having  placed  her  in  a  difficult  situation  he  had 
always  been  careful  not  to  increase  its  difficulties  by 
any  imprudence  in  his  conduct  toward  his  employers. 
Yet,  grave  as  these  considerations  were,  they  were 
really  less  potent  than  his  personal  desire  to  remain  at 
Westmore.  Lightly  as  he  had  just  resolved  to  risk  the 
chance  of  dismissal,  all  his  future  was  bound  up  in  the 
hope  of  retaining  his  place.  His  heart  was  in  the  work 
at  Westmore,  and  the  fear  of  not  being  able  to  get  other 
employment  was  a  small  factor  in  his  intense  desire  to 
keep  his  post.  What  he  really  wanted  was  to  speak 
out,  and  yet  escape  the  consequences :  by  some  miracu- 
lous reversal  of  probability  to  retain  his  position  and 
yet  effect  Truscomb's  removal.  The  idea  was  so 
fantastic  that  he  felt  it  merely  as  a  quickening  of  all  his 

[54] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

activities,  a  tremendous  pressure  of  will  along  undeter- 
mined lines.  He  had  no  wish  to  take  the  manager's 
place;  but  his  dream  was  to  see  Truscomb  superseded 
by  a  man  of  the  new  school,  in  sympathy  with  the 
awakening  social  movement — a  man  sufficiently  prac- 
tical to  "run"  the  mills  successfully,  yet  imaginative 
enough  to  regard  that  task  as  the  least  of  his  duties. 
He  saw  the  promise  of  such  a  man  in  Louis  Duplain, 
the  overseer  who  boarded  with  Mrs.  Amherst:  a  young 
fellow  of  Alsatian  extraction,  a  mill-hand  from  child- 
hood, who  had  worked  at  his  trade  in  Europe  as  well 
as  in  America,  and  who  united  with  more  manual  skill, 
and  a  greater  nearness  to  the  workman's  standpoint, 
all  Amherst's  enthusiasm  for  the  experiments  in  social 
betterment  that  were  making  in  some  of  the  English 
and  continental  factories.  His  strongest  wish  was  to 
see  such  a  man  as  Duplain  in  control  at  Westmore 
before  he  himself  turned  to  the  larger  work  which  he 
had  begun  to  see  before  him  as  the  sequel  to  his  factory- 
training. 

All  these  thoughts  swept  through  him  in  the  instant's 
pause  before  Mrs.  Westmore,  responding  to  his  last 
appeal,  said  with  a  graceful  eagerness:  "Yes,  you  must 
come  tonight.  I  want  to  hear  all  you  can  tell  me — 
and  if  there  is  anything  wrong  you  must  show  me  how 
I  can  make  it  better." 

"I'll  show  her,  and  Truscomb  shan't  turn  me  out 
[55] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

for  it,"  was  the  vow  he  passionately  registered  as 
the  carriage  drew  up  at  the  office-door  of  the  main 
building. 

How  this  impossible  result  was  to  be  achieved  he 
had  no  farther  time  to  consider,  for  in  another  moment 
the  rest  of  the  party  had  entered  the  factory  with 
them,  and  speech  was  followed  up  in  the  roar  of  the 
machinery. 

Amherst's  zeal  for  his  cause  was  always  quickened 
by  the  sight  of  the  mills  in  action.  He  loved  the  work 
itself  as  much  as  he  hated  the  conditions  under  which 
it  was  done;  and  he  longed  to  see  on  the  operatives' 
faces  something  of  the  ardour  that  lit  up  his  own  when 
he  entered  the  work-rooms.  It  was  this  passion  for 
machinery  that  at  school  had  turned  him  from  his 
books,  at  college  had  drawn  him  to  the  courses  least 
in  the  line  of  his  destined  profession;  and  it  always 
seized  on  him  afresh  when  he  was  face  to  face  with  the 
monstrous  energies  of  the  mills.  It  was  not  only  the 
sense  of  power  that  thrilled  him — he  felt  a  beauty  in 
the  ordered  activity  of  the  whole  intricate  organism, 
in  the  rhythm  of  dancing  bobbins  and  revolving  cards, 
the  swift  continuous  outpour  of  doublers  and  ribbon- 
laps,  the  steady  ripple  of  the  long  ply-frames,  the  terri- 
ble gnashing  play  of  the  looms — all  these  varying 
subordinate  motions,  gathered  up  into  the  throb  of 
the  great  engines  which  fed  the  giant's  arteries,  and 
[56] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

were  in  turn  ruled  by  the  invisible  action  of  quick 
thought  and  obedient  hands,  always  produced  in  Am- 
herst  a  responsive  rush  of  life. 

He  knew  this  sensation  was  too  specialized  to  affect 
his  companions;  but  he  expected  Mrs.  Westmore  to 
be  all  the  more  alive  to  the  other  side — the  dark  side  of 
monotonous  human  toil,  of  the  banquet  of  flesh  and 
blood  and  brain  perpetually  served  up  to  the  monster 
whose  insatiable  jaws  the  looms  so  grimly  typified. 
Truscomb,  as  he  had  told  her,  was  a  good  manager 
from  the  profit-taking  standpoint.  Since  it  was  profit- 
able to  keep  the  machinery  in  order,  he  maintained 
throughout  the  factory  a  high  standard  of  mechanical 
supervision,  except  where  one  or  two  favoured  over- 
seers— for  Truscomb  was  given  to  favoritism — shirked 
the  duties  of  their  departments.  But  it  was  of  the  es- 
sence of  Truscomb's  policy — and  not  the  least  of  the 
qualities  which  made  him  a  "paying"  manager — that 
he  saved  money  scrupulously  where  its  outlay  would 
not  have  resulted  in  larger  earnings.  To  keep  the 
floors  scrubbed,  the  cotton-dust  swept  up,  the  rooms 
freshly  whitewashed  and  well-ventilated,  far  from  add- 
ing the  smallest  fraction  to  the  quarterly  dividends, 
would  have  deducted  from  them  the  slight  cost  of  this 
additional  labour;  and  Truscomb  therefore  economized 
on  scrubbers,  sweepers  and  window-washers,  and  on 
all  expenses  connected  with  improved  ventilation  and 
[57] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

other  hygienic  precautions.  Though  the  whole  factory 
was  over-crowded,  the  newest  buildings  were  more 
carefully  planned,  and  had  the  usual  sanitary  improve- 
ments; but  the  old  mills  had  been  left  in  their  original 
state,  and  even  those  most  recently  built  were  fast 
lapsing  into  squalor.  It  was  no  wonder,  therefore,  that 
workers  imprisoned  within  such  walls  should  reflect 
their  long  hours  of  deadening  toil  in  dull  eyes  and 
anaemic  skins,  and  in  the  dreary  lassitude  with  which 
they  bent  to  their  tasks. 

Surely,  Amherst  argued,  Mrs.  Westmore  must  feel 
this;  must  feel  it  all  the  more  keenly,  coming  from  an 
atmosphere  so  different,  from  a  life  where,  as  he  in- 
stinctively divined,  all  was  in  harmony  with  her  own 
graceful  person.  But  a  deep  disappointment  awaited 
him.  He  was  still  under  the  spell  of  their  last  moments 
in  the  carriage,  when  her  face  and  voice  had  promised 
so  much,  when  she  had  seemed  so  deeply,  if  vaguely, 
stirred  by  his  appeal.  But  as  they  passed  from  one  re- 
sounding room  to  the  other — from  the  dull  throb  of  the 
carding-room,  the  groan  of  the  ply-frames,  the  long 
steady  pound  of  the  slashers,  back  to  the  angry  shriek 
of  the  fierce  unappeasable  looms — the  light  faded  from 
her  eyes  and  she  looked  merely  bewildered  and  stunned. 

Amherst,  hardened  to  the  din  of  the  factory,  could 
not  measure  its  effect  on  nerves  accustomed  to  the 
subdued  sounds  and  spacious  stillnesses  which  are  the 
[58] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

last  refinement  of  luxury.  Habit  had  made  him  un- 
conscious of  that  malicious  multiplication  and  sub- 
division of  noise  that  kept  every  point  of  consciousness 
vibrating  to  a  different  note,  so  that  while  one  set  of 
nerves  was  torn  as  with  pincers  by  the  dominant  scream 
of  the  looms,  others  were  thrilled  with  a  separate  pain 
by  the  ceaseless  accompaniment  of  drumming,  hissing, 
grating  and  crashing  that  shook  the  great  building. 
Amherst  felt  this  tumult  only  as  part  of  the  atmosphere 
of  the  mills;  and  to  ears  trained  like  his  own  he  could 
make  his  voice  heard  without  difficulty.  But  his 
attempts  at  speech  were  unintelligible  to  Mrs.  West- 
more  and  her  companions,  and  after  vainly  trying  to 
communicate  with  him  by  signs  they  hurried  on  as  if 
to  escape  as  quickly  as  possible  from  the  pursuing 
whirlwind. 

Amherst  could  not  allow  for  the  depressing  effect  of 
this  enforced  silence.  He  did  not  see  that  if  Bessy 
could  have  questioned  him  the  currents  of  sympathy 
might  have  remained  open  between  them,  whereas, 
compelled  to  walk  in  silence  through  interminable 
ranks  of  meaningless  machines,  to  which  the  human 
workers  seemed  mere  automatic  appendages,  she  lost 
all  perception  of  what  the  scene  meant.  He  had 
forgotten,  too,  that  the  swift  apprehension  of  suffering 
in  others  is  as  much  the  result  of  training  as  the  imme- 
diate perception  of  beauty.  Both  perceptions  may  be 
[59] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

inborn,  but  if  they  are  not  they  can  be  developed  only 
through  the  discipline  of  experience. 

"That  girl  in  the  hospital  would  have  seen  it  all," 
he  reflected,  as  the  vision  of  Miss  Brent's  small  incisive 
profile  rose  before  him ;  but  the  next  moment  he  caught 
the  light  on  Mrs.  Westmore's  hair,  as  she  bent  above  a 
card,  and  the  paler  image  faded  like  a  late  moon  in 
the  sunrise. 

Meanwhile  Mrs.  Ansell,  seeing  that  the  detailed  in- 
spection of  the  buildings  was  as  trying  to  Mr.  Lang- 
hope's  lameness  as  to  his  daughter's  nerves,  had  pro- 
posed to  turn  back  with  him  and  drive  to  Mrs.  Am- 
herst's,  where  he  might  leave  her  to  call  while  the 
others  were  completing  their  rounds.  It  was  one  of  Mrs. 
Ansell's  gifts  to  detect  the  first  symptoms  of  ennui  in  her 
companions,  and  produce  a  remedy  as  patly  as  old  ladies 
whisk  out  a  scent-bottle  or  a  cough-lozenge;  and  Mr. 
Langhope's  look  of  relief  showed  the  timeliness  of  her 
suggestion. 

Amherst  was  too  preoccupied  to  wonder  how  his 
mother  would  take  this  visit;  but  he  welcomed  Mr. 
Langhope's  departure,  hoping  that  the  withdrawal  of 
his  ironic  smile  would  leave  his  daughter  open  to  gentler 
influences.  Mr.  Tredegar,  meanwhile,  was  projecting 
his  dry  glance  over  the  scene,  trying  to  converse  by 
signs  with  the  overseers  of  the  different  rooms,  and 
pausing  now  and  then  to  contemplate,  not  so  much  the 
[60] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

workers  themselves  as  the  special  tasks  which  engaged 
them. 

How  these  spectators  of  the  party's  progress  were 
affected  by  Mrs.  Westmore's  appearance,  even  Am- 
herst,  for  all  his  sympathy  with  their  views,  could 
not  detect.  They  knew  that  she  was  the  new  owner, 
that  a  disproportionate  amount  of  the  result  of  their 
toil  would  in  future  pass  through  her  hands,  spread 
carpets  for  her  steps,  and  hang  a  setting  of  beauty  about 
her  eyes;  but  the  knowledge  seemed  to  produce  no 
special  interest  in  her  personality.  A  change  of  em- 
ployer was  not  likely  to  make  any  change  in  their  lot: 
their  welfare  would  probably  continue  to  depend  on 
Truscomb's  favour.  The  men  hardly  raised  their 
heads  as  Mrs.  Westmore  passed;  the  women  stared, 
but  with  curiosity  rather  than  interest;  and  Amherst 
could  not  tell  whether  their  sullenness  reacted  on  Mrs. 
Westmore,  or  whether  they  were  unconsciously  chilled 
by  her  indifference.  The  result  was  the  same:  the 
distance  between  them  seemed  to  increase  instead  of 
diminishing;  and  he  smiled  ironically  to  think  of  the 
form  his  appeal  had  taken — "If  you  see  anything  that 
seems  to  need  explaining."  Why,  she  saw  nothing — 
nothing  but  the  greasy  floor  under  her  feet,  the  cotton- 
dust  in  her  eyes,  the  dizzy  incomprehensible  whirring 
of  innumerable  belts  and  wheels!  Once  out  of  it  all, 
she  would  make  haste  to  forget  the  dreary  scene 
[61] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

without  pausing  to  ask  for  any  explanation  of  its 
dreariness. 

In  the  intensity  of  his  disappointment  he  sought  a 
pretext  to  cut  short  the  tour  of  the  buildings,  that  he 
might  remove  his  eyes  from  the  face  he  had  so  vainly 
watched  for  any  sign  of  awakening.  And  then,  as  he 
despaired  of  it,  the  change  came. 

They  had  entered  the  principal  carding-room,  and 
were  half-way  down  its  long  central  passage,  when  Mr. 
Tredegar,  who  led  the  procession,  paused  before  one 
of  the  cards. 

"What's  that?"  he  asked,  pointing  to  a  ragged  strip 
of  black  cloth  tied  conspicuously  to  the  frame  of  the 
card. 

The  overseer  of  the  room,  a  florid  young  man  with 
dissipated  eyes,  who,  at  Aniherst's  signal,  had  attached 
himself  to  the  party,  stopped  short  and  turned  a  furious 
glance  on  the  surrounding  operatives. 

"What  in  hell  .  .  .  ?  It's  the  first  I  seen  of  it,"  he 
exclaimed,  making  an  ineffectual  attempt  to  snatch  the 
mourning  emblem  from  its  place. 

At  the  same  instant  the  midday  whistle  boomed 
through  the  building,  and  at  the  signal  the  machinery 
stopped,  and  silence  fell  on  the  mills.  The  more  dis- 
tant workers  at  once  left  their  posts  to  catch  up  the 
hats  and  coats  heaped  untidily  in  the  corners;  but 
those  nearer  by,  attracted  by  the  commotion  around 

[62] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

the  card,  stood  spell-bound,  fixing  the  visitors  with  a 
dull  stare. 

Amherst  had  reddened  to  the  roots  of  his  hair.  He 
knew  in  a  flash  what  the  token  signified,  and  the  sight 
stirred  his  pity;  but  it  also  jarred  on  his  strong  sense  of 
discipline,  and  he  turned  sternly  to  the  operatives. 

"What  does  this  mean?'*" 

There  was  a  short  silence;  then  one  of  the  hands,  a  thin 
bent  man  with  mystic  eyes,  raised  his  head  and  spoke. 

"We  done  that  for  Dillon,"  he  said. 

Amherst's  glance  swept  the  crowded  faces.  "But 
Dillon  was  not  killed,"  he  exclaimed,  while  the  overseer, 
drawing  out  his  pen-knife,  ripped  off  the  cloth  and 
tossed  it  contemptuously  into  a  heap  of  cotton-refuse 
at  his  feet. 

"Might  better  ha'  been,"  came  from  another  hand; 
and  a  deep  "That's  so"  of  corroboration  ran  through 
the  knot  of  workers. 

Amherst  felt  a  touch  on  his  arm,  and  met  Mrs.  West- 
more's  eyes.  "What  has  happened?  What  do  they 
mean  ?"  she  asked  in  a  startled  voice. 

"There  was  an  accident  here  two  days  ago:  a  man 
got  caught  in  the  card  behind  him,  and  his  right  hand 
was  badly  crushed." 

Mr.  Tredegar  intervened  with  his  dry  note  of  com- 
mand. "How  serious  is  the  accident?  How  did  it 
happen?"  he  enquired. 

[63] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Through  the  man's  own  carelessness — ask  the 
manager,"  the  overseer  interposed  before  Amherst 
could  answer. 

A  deep  murmur  of  dissent  ran  through  the  crowd, 
but  Amherst,  without  noticing  the  overseer's  reply, 
said  to  Mr.  Tredegar:  "He's  at  the  Hope  Hospital. 
He  will  lose  his  hand,  and  probably  the  whole  arm." 

He  had  not  meant  to  add  this  last  phrase.  However 
strongly  his  sympathies  were  aroused,  it  was  against  his 
rule,  at  such  a  time,  to  say  anything  which  might  in- 
flame the  quick  passions  of  the  workers :  he  had  meant 
to  ma^e  light  of  the  accident,  and  dismiss  the  opera- 
tives with  a  sharp  word  of  reproof.  But  Mrs.  West- 
more 's  face  was  close  to  his:  he  saw  the  pity  in  her 
eyes,  and  feared,  if  he  checked  its  expression,  that  he 
might  never  again  have  the  chance  of  calling  it  forth. 

"His  right  arm?  How  terrible!  But  then  he  will 
never  be  able  to  work  again!"  she  exclaimed,  in  all  the 
horror  of  a  first  confrontation  with  the  inexorable  fate 
of  the  poor. 

Her  eyes  turned  from  Amherst  and  rested  on  the 
faces  pressing  about  her.  There  were  many  women's 
faces  among  them — the  faces  of  fagged  middle-age,  and 
of  sallow  sedentary  girlhood.  For  the  first  time  Mrs. 
Westmore  seemed  to  feel  the  bond  of  blood  between 
herself  and  these  dim  creatures  of  the  underworld:  as 
Amherst  watched  her  the  lovely  miracle  was  wrought. 

[64] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Her  pallour  gave  way  to  a  quick  rush  of  colour,  her 
eyes  widened  like  a  frightened  child's,  and  two  tears 
rose  and  rolled  slowly  down  her  face. 

"Oh,  why  wasn't  I  told?  Is  he  married?  Has  he 
children  ?  What  does  it  matter  whose  fault  it  was  ? " 
she  cried,  her  questions  pouring  out  disconnectedly  on 
a  wave  of  anger  and  compassion. 

"It  warn't  his  fault.  .  .  .  The  cards  are  too  close 
....  It'll  happen  again.  .  .  .  He's  got  three  kids  at 
home,"  broke  from  the  operatives;  and  suddenly  a 
voice  exclaimed  "Here's  his  wife  now,"  and  the  crowd 
divided  to  make  way  for  Mrs.  Dillon,  who,  passing 
through  the  farther  end  of  the  room,  had  been  waylaid 
and  dragged  toward  the  group. 

She  hung  back,  shrinking  from  the  murderous  ma- 
chine, which  she  beheld  for  the  first  time  since  her 
husband's  accident;  then  she  saw  Amherst,  guessed 
the  identity  of  the  lady  at  his  side,  and  flushed  up  to 
her  haggard  forehead.  Mrs.  Dillon  had  been  good- 
looking  in  her  earlier  youth,  and  sufficient  prettiness 
lingered  in  her  hollow-cheeked  face  to  show  how  much 
more  had  been  sacrificed  to  sickness  and  unwhole- 
some toil. 

"Oh,  ma'am,  ma'am,  it  warn't  Jim's  fault — there 
ain't  a  steadier  man  living.  The  cards  is  too  crowded," 
she  sobbed  out. 

Some  of  the  other  women  began  to  cry:  a  wave  of 
[65] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

sympathy  ran  through  the  circle,  and  Mrs.  Westmore 
moved  forward  with  an  answering  exclamation.  "You 
poor  creature.  .  .  you  poor  creature.  .  .  ."  She  opened 
her  arms  to  Mrs.  Dillon,  and  the  scrubber's  sobs  were 
buried  on  her  employer's  breast. 

"  I  will  go  to  the  hospital — I  will  come  and  see  you— 
I  will  see  that  everything  is  done,"  Bessy  reiterated. 
"  But  why  are  you  here  ?  How  is  it  that  you  have  had 
to  leave  your  children?"  She  freed  herself  to  turn  a 
reproachful  glance  on  Amherst.  "You  don't  mean  to 
tell  me  that,  at  such  a  time,  you  keep  the  poor  woman 
at  work?" 

"Mrs.  Dillon  has  not  been  working  here  lately," 
Amherst  answered.  "The  manager  took  her  back  to- 
day at  her  own  request,  that  she  might  earn  something 
while  her  husband  was  in  hospital." 

Mrs.  Westmore's  eyes  shone  indignantly.  "Earn 
something  ?  But  surely 

She  met  a  silencing  look  from  Mr.  Tredegar,  who  had 
stepped  between  Mrs.  Dillon  and  herself. 

"My  dear  child,  no  one  doubts — none  of  these  good 
people  doubt — that  you  will  look  into  the  case,  and  do 
all  you  can  to  alleviate  it;  but  let  me  suggest  that  this 
is  hardly  the  place ' 

She  turned  from  him  with  an  appealing  glance  at 
Amherst. 

"I  think,"  the  latter  said,  as  their  eyes  met,  "that 
[66] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

you  had  better  let  me  dismiss  the  hands:  they  have 
only  an  hour  at  midday." 

She  signed  her  assent,  and  he  turned  to  the  opera- 
tives and  said  quietly:  "You  have  heard  Mrs.  West- 
more's  promise;  now  take  yourselves  off,  and  give  her 
a  clear  way  to  the  stairs." 

They  dropped  back,  and  Mr.  Tredegar  drew  Bessy's 
arm  through  his;  but  as  he  began  to  move  away  she 
turned  and  laid  her  hand  on  Mrs.  Dillon's  shoulder. 

"You  must  not  stay  here — you  must  go  back  to  the 
children.  I  will  make  it  right  with  Mr.  Truscomb," 
she  said  in  a  reassuring  whisper;  then,  through  her 
tears,  she  smiled  a  farewell  at  the  lingering  knot  of 
operatives,  and  followed  her  companions  to  the 
door. 

In  silence  they  descended  the  many  stairs  and  crossed 
the  shabby  unfenced  grass-plot  between  the  mills  and 
the  manager's  office.  It  was  not  till  they  reached  the 
carriage  that  Mrs.  Westmore  spoke. 

"But  Maria  is  waiting  for  us — we  must  call  for  her!" 
she  said,  rousing  herself;  and  as  Amherst  opened  the 
carriage-door  she  added:  "You  will  show  us  the  way? 
You  will  drive  with  us  ? " 

During  the  drive  Bessy  remained  silent,  as  if  re- 
absorbed  in  the  distress  of  the  scene  she  had  just  wit- 
nessed ;  and  Amherst  found  himself  automatically  an- 
swering Mr.  Tredegar's  questions,  while  his  own  mind 
[67] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

had  no  room  for  anything  but  the  sense  of  her  tremu- 
lous lips  and  of  her  eyes  enlarged  by  tears.  He  had 
been  too  much  engrossed  in  the  momentous  issues  of 
her  visit  to  the  mills  to  remember  that  she  had  prom- 
ised to  call  at  his  mother's  for  Mrs.  Ansell;  but  now 
that  they  were  on  their  way  thither  he  found  himself 
wishing  that  the  visit  might  have  been  avoided.  He 
was  too  proud  of  his  mother  to  feel  any  doubt  of  the 
impression  she  would  produce;  but  what  would  Mrs. 
Westmore  think  of  their  way  of  living,  of  the  cheap 
jauntiness  of  the  cottage,  and  the  smell  of  cooking  pen- 
etrating all  its  thin  partitions  ?  Duplain,  too,  would  be 
coming  in  for  dinner;  and  Amherst,  in  spite  of  his  lik- 
ing for  the  young  overseer,  became  conscious  of  a 
rather  overbearing  freedom  in  his  manner,  the  kind  of 
misplaced  ease  which  the  new-made  American  affects 
as  the  readiest  sign  of  equality.  All  these  trifles,  usually 
non-existent  or  supremely  indifferent  to  Amherst,  now 
assumed  a  sudden  importance,  behind  which  he  detected 
the  uneasy  desire  that  Mrs.  Westmore  should  not  regard 
him  as  less  of  her  own  class  than  his  connections  and 
his  bringing-up  entitled  him  to  be  thought.  In  a  flash 
he  saw  what  he  had  forfeited  by  his  choice  of  a  calling — 
equal  contact  with  the  little  circle  of  people  who  gave 
life  its  crowning  grace  and  facility;  and  the  next  mo- 
ment he  was  blushing  at  this  reversal  of  his  standards, 
and  wondering,  almost  contemptuously,  what  could  be 
[68] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

the  nature  of  the  woman  whose  mere  presence  could 
produce  such  a  change. 

But  there  was  no  struggling  against  her  influence; 
and  as,  the  night  before,  he  had  looked  at  Westmore 
with  the  nurse's  eyes,  so  he  now  found  himself  seeing 
his  house  as  it  must  appear  to  Mrs.  Westmore.  He 
noticed  the  shabby  yellow  paint  of  the  palings,  the  neg- 
lected garden  of  their  neighbour,  the  week's  wash 
flaunting  itself  indecently  through  the  denuded  shrubs 
about  the  kitchen  porch;  and  as  he  admitted  his  com- 
panions to  the  narrow  passage  he  was  assailed  by  the 
expected  whiff  of  "  boiled  dinner,"  with  which  the  steam 
of  wash-tubs  was  intimately  mingled. 

Duplain  was  in  the  passage;  he  had  just  come  out 
of  the  kitchen,  and  the  fact  that  he  had  been  washing 
his  hands  in  the  sink  was  made  evident  by  his  rolled- 
back  shirt-sleeves,  and  by  the  shiny  redness  of  the 
knuckles  he  was  running  through  his  stiff  black  hair. 

"Hallo,  John,"  he  said,  in  his  aggressive  voice,  which 
rose  abruptly  at  sight  of  Amherst's  companions;  and 
at  the  same  moment  the  frowsy  maid-of-all-work, 
crimson  from  stooping  over  the  kitchen  stove,  thrust 
her  head  out  to  call  after  him:  "See  here,  Mr.  Duplain, 
don't  you  leave  your  cravat  laying  round  in  my 
dough." 


[69] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 


MRS.  WESTMOKE  stayed  just  long  enough  not  to 
break  in  too  abruptly  on  the  flow  of  her  friend's 
reminiscences,  and  to  impress  herself  on  Mrs.  Am- 
herst's  delighted  eyes  as  an  embodiment  of  tactfulness 
and  grace — looking  sympathetically  about  the  little 
room,  which,  with  its  books,  its  casts,  its  photographs 
of  memorable  pictures,  seemed,  after  all,  a  not  incon- 
gruous setting  to  her  charms;  so  that  when  she  rose  to 
go,  saying,  as  her  hand  met  Amherst's,  "Tonight,  then, 
you  must  tell  me  all  about  those  poor  Dillons,"  he  had 
the  sense  of  having  penetrated  so  far  into  her  intimacy 
that  a  new  Westmore  must  inevitably  result  from  their 
next  meeting. 

"Say,  John — the  boss  is  a  looker,"  Duplain  com- 
mented across  the  dinner-table,  with  the  slangy  gross- 
ness  he  sometimes  affected;  but  Amherst  left  it  to  his 
mother  to  look  a  quiet  rebuke,  feeling  himself  too  aloof 
from  such  contacts  to  resent  them. 

He  had  to  rouse  himself  with  an  effort  to  take  in  the 
overseer's  next  observation.  "There  was  another  lady 
at  the  office  this  morning,"  Duplain  went  on,  while  the 
two  men  lit  their  cigars  in  the  porch.  "Asking  after 
you — tried  to  get  me  to  show  her  over  the  mills  when  I 
said  you  were  busy." 

"Asking  after  me ?    What  did  she  look  like ?" 
[70] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"  Well,  her  face  was  kinder  white  and  small,  with  an 
awful  lot  of  black  hair  fitting  close  to  it.  Said  she  came 
from  Hope  Hospital." 

Amherst  looked  up.  "Did  you  show  her  over?"  he 
asked  with  sudden  interest. 

Duplain  laughed  slangily .  "  What  ?  Me  ?  And  have 
Truscomb  get  on  to  it  and  turn  me  down?  How'd  I 
know  she  wasn't  a  yellow  reporter?" 

Amherst  uttered  an  impatient  exclamation.  "I  wish 
to  heaven  a  yellow  reporter  would  go  through  these 
mills,  and  show  them  up  in  head-lines  a  yard  high ! " 

He  regretted  not  having  seen  the  nurse  again:  he 
felt  sure  she  would  have  been  interested  in  the  working 
of  the  mills,  and  quick  to  notice  the  signs  of  discourage- 
ment and  ill-health  in  the  workers'  faces;  but  a  mo- 
ment later  his  regret  was  dispelled  by  the  thought 
of  his  visit  to  Mrs.  Westmore.  The  afternoon  hours 
dragged  slowly  by  in  the  office,  where  he  was  bound 
to  his  desk  by  Truscomb 's  continued  absence;  but 
at  length  the  evening  whistle  blew,  the  clerks  in  the 
outer  room  caught  their  hats  from  the  rack,  Duplain 
presented  himself  with  the  day's  report,  and  the  two 
men  were  free  to  walk  home. 

Two  hours  later  Amherst  was  mounting  Mrs.  West- 
more's  steps;  and  his  hand  was  on  the  bell  when  the 
door  opened  and  Dr.  Disbrow  came  out.  The  phy- 
sician drew  back,  as  if  surprised  and  slightly  discon- 
[71] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

certed;  but  his  smile  promptly  effaced  all  signs  of 
vexation,  and  he  held  his  hand  out  affably. 

"A  fine  evening,  Mr.  Amherst.  I'm  glad  to  say  I 
have  been  able  to  bring  Mrs.  Westmore  an  excellent 
report  of  both  patients — Mr.  Truscomb,  I  mean,  and 
poor  Dillon.  This  mild  weather  is  all  in  their  favour, 
and  I  hope  my  brother-in-law  will  be  about  in  a  day  or 
two."  He  passed  on  with  a  nod. 

Amherst  was  once  more  shown  into  the  library  where 
he  had  found  Mrs.  Westmore  that  morning;  but  on 
this  occasion  it  was  Mr.  Tredegar  who  rose  to  meet  him, 
and  curtly  waved  him  to  a  seat  at  a  respectful  distance 
from  his  own.  Amherst  at  once  felt  a  change  of  atmos- 
phere, and  it  was  easy  to  guess  that  the  lowering  of 
temperature  was  due  to  Dr.  Disbrow's  recent  visit. 
The  thought  roused  the  young  man's  combative  in- 
stincts, and  caused  him  to  say,  as  Mr.  Tredegar  con- 
tinued to  survey  him  in  silence  from  the  depths  of  a 
capacious  easy-chair:  "I  understood  from  Mrs.  West- 
more  that  she  wished  to  see  me  this  evening." 

It  was  the  wrong  note,  and  he  knew  it;  but  he  had 
been  unable  to  conceal  his  sense  of  the  vague  current 
of  opposition  in  the  air. 

"Quite  so:  I  believe  she  asked  you  to  come,"  Mr. 
Tredegar  assented,  laying  his  hands  together  vertically, 
and  surveying  Amherst  above  the  acute  angle  formed 
by  his  parched  finger-tips.  As  he  leaned  back,  small, 

[72] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

dry,  dictatorial,  in  the  careless  finish  of  his  evening 
dress  and  pearl-studded  shirt-front,  his  appearance  put 
the  finishing  touch  to  Amherst's  irritation.  He  felt  the 
incongruousness  of  his  rough  clothes  in  this  atmosphere 
of  after-dinner  ease,  the  mud  on  his  walking-boots,  the 
clinging  cotton-dust  which  seemed  to  have  entered  into 
the  very  pores  of  the  skin;  and  again  his  annoyance 
escaped  in  his  voice. 

"Perhaps  I  have  come  too  early — "  he  began;  but 
Mr.  Tredegar  interposed  with  glacial  amenity:  "No, 
I  believe  you  are  exactly  on  time;  but  Mrs.  Westmore 
is  unexpectedly  detained.  The  fact  is,  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Halford  Gaines  are  dining  with  her,  and  she  has 
delegated  to  me  the  duty  of  hearing  what  you  have  to 
say." 

Amherst  hesitated.  His  impulse  was  to  exclaim: 
"There  is  no  duty  about  it!  "but  a  moment's  thought 
showed  the  folly  of  thus  throwing  up  the  game.  With 
the  prospect  of  Truscomb's  being  about  again  in  a  day 
or  two,  it  might  well  be  that  this  was  his  last  chance 
of  reaching  Mrs.  Westmore's  ear;  and  he  was  bound 
to  put  his  case  while  he  could,  irrespective  of  personal 
feeling.  But  his  disappointment  was  too  keen  to  be 
denied,  and  after  a  pause  he  said:  "Could  I  not  speak 
with  Mrs.  Westmore  later?" 

Mr.  Tredegar's  cool  survey  deepened  to  a  frown. 
The  young  man's  importunity  was  really  out  of  pro* 
[73] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

portion  to  what  he  signified.  "Mrs.  Westmore  has 
asked  me  to  replace  her,"  he  said,  putting  his  previous 
statement  more  concisely. 

"Then  I  am  not  to  see  her  at  all?"  Amherst  ex- 
claimed; and  the  lawyer  replied  indifferently:  "I  am 
afraid  not,  as  she  leaves  tomorrow." 

Mr.  Tredegar  was  in  his  element  when  refusing  a 
favour.  Not  that  he  was  by  nature  unkind;  he  was, 
indeed,  capable  of  a  cold  beneficence;  but  to  deny 
what  it  was  in  his  power  to  accord  was  the  readiest  way 
of  proclaiming  his  authority,  that  power  of  loosing  and 
binding  which  made  him  regard  himself  as  almost  con- 
secrated to  his  office. 

Having  sacrificed  to  this  principle,  he  felt  free  to  add 
as  a  gratuitous  concession  to  politeness:  "You  are  per- 
haps not  aware  that  I  am  Mrs.  Westmore's  lawyer, 
and  one  of  the  executors  under  her  husband's  will." 

He  dropped  this  negligently,  as  though  conscious  of 
the  absurdity  of  presenting  his  credentials  to  a  sub- 
ordinate; but  his  manner  no  longer  incensed  Amherst: 
it  merely  strengthened  his  resolve  to  sink  all  sense  of 
affront  in  the  supreme  effort  of  obtaining  a  hearing. 

"With  that  stuffed  canary  to  advise  her,"  he  reflected, 
"there's  no  hope  for  her  unless  I  can  assert  myself 
now";  and  the  unconscious  wording  of  his  thought 
expressed  his  inward  sense  that  Bessy  Westmore  stood 
in  greater  need  of  help  than  her  work-people. 
[74] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Still  he  hesitated,  hardly  knowing  how  to  begin. 
To  Mr.  Tredegar  he  was  no  more  than  an  under- 
ling, without  authority  to  speak  in  his  superior's  ab- 
sence; and  the  lack  of  an  official  warrant,  which  he 
could  have  disregarded  in  appealing  to  Mrs.  Westmore, 
made  it  hard  for  him  to  find  a  good  opening  in  address- 
ing her  representative.  He  saw,  too,  from  Mr.  Tred- 
egar's  protracted  silence,  that  the  latter  counted  on  the 
effect  of  this  embarrassment,  and  was  resolved  not  to 
minimize  it  by  giving  him  a  lead;  and  this  had  the 
effect  of  increasing  his  caution. 

He  looked  up  and  met  the  lawyer's  eye.  "Mrs. 
Westmore,"  he  began,  "asked  me  to  let  her  know 
something  about  the  condition  of  the  people  at  the 
mills " 

Mr.  Tredegar  raised  his  hand.  "Excuse  me,"  he 
said.  "I  understood  from  Mrs.  Westmore  that  it 
was  you  who  asked  her  permission  to  call  this  evening 
and  set  forth  certain  grievances  on  the  part  of  the 
operatives." 

Amherst  reddened.  "I  did  ask  her — yes.  But  I 
don't  in  any  sense  represent  the  operatives.  I  simply 
wanted  to  say  a  word  for  them." 

Mr.  Tredegar  folded  his  hands  again,  and  crossed 
one  lean  little  leg  over  the  other,  bringing  into  his  line 
of  vision  the  glossy  tip  of  a  patent-leather  pump,  which 
he  studied  for  a  moment  in  silence. 
[75] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Does  Mr.  Truscomb  know  of  your  intention?"  he 
then  enquired. 

"No,  sir,"  Amherst  answered  energetically,  glad  that 
he  had  forced  the  lawyer  out  of  his  passive  tactics.  "  I 
am  here  on  my  own  responsibility — and  in  direct  oppo- 
sition to  my  own  interests,"  he  continued  with  a  slight 
smile.  "I  know  that  my  proceeding  is  quite  out  of 
order,  and  that  I  have,  personally,  everything  to  lose 
by  it,  and  in  a  larger  way  probably  very  little  to  gain; 
but  I  thought  Mrs.  Westmore's  attention  ought  to  be 
called  to  certain  conditions  at  the  mills,  and  no  one 
else  seemed  likely  to  speak  of  them." 

"May  I  ask  why  you  assume  that  Mr.  Truscomb 
will  not  do  so  when  he  has  the  opportunity  ? " 

Amherst  could  not  repress  a  smile.  "Because  it  is 
owing  to  Mr.  Truscomb  that  they  exist." 

"The  real  object  of  your  visit  then,"  said  Mr.  Tred- 
egar,  speaking  with  deliberation,  "is — er — an  under- 
hand attack  on  your  manager's  methods?" 

Amherst's  face  darkened,  but  he  kept  his  temper. 
"I  see  nothing  especially  underhand  in  my  course — 

"Except,"  the  other  interposed  ironically,  "that  you 
have  waited  to  speak  till  Mr.  Truscomb  was  not  in  a 
position  to  defend  himself." 

"I  never  had  the  chance  before.  It  was  at  Mrs. 
Westmore's  own  suggestion  that  I  took  her  over  the 
mills,  and  feeling  as  I  do  I  should  have  thought  it 
[76] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

cowardly  to  shirk  the  chance  of  pointing  out  to  her  the 
conditions  there." 

Mr.  Tredegar  mused,  his  eyes  still  bent  on  his  gently- 
oscillating  foot.  Whenever  a  sufficient  pressure  from 
without  parted  the  fog  of  self-complacency  in  which  he 
moved,  he  had  a  shrewd  enough  outlook  on  men  and 
motives;  and  it  may  be  that  the  vigorous  ring  of  Am- 
herst's  answer  had  effected  this  momentary  clearing  of 
the  air. 

At  any  rate,  his  next  words  were  spoken  in  a  more 
accessible  tone.  "To  what  conditions  do  you  refer?" 

"To  the  conditions  under  which  the  mill-hands  work 
and  live — to  the  whole  management  of  the  mills,  in 
fact,  in  relation  to  the  people  employed." 

"That  is  a  large  question.  Pardon  my  possible  ig- 
norance— "  Mr.  Tredegar  paused  to  make  sure  that 
his  hearer  took  in  the  full  irony  of  this — "but  surely  in 
this  state  there  are  liability  and  inspection  laws  for  the 
protection  of  the  operatives?" 

"There  are  such  laws,  yes — but  most  of  them  are 
either  a  dead  letter,  or  else  so  easily  evaded  that  no 
employer  thinks  of  conforming  to  them." 

"No  employer?  Then  your  specific  charge  against 
the  Westmore  mills  is  part  of  a  general  arraignment  of 
all  employers  of  labour  ?  " 

"By  no  means,  sir.  I  only  meant  that,  where  the 
hands  are  well  treated,  it  is  due  rather  to  the  personal 
[77] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

good-will  of  the  employer  than  to  any  fear  of  the 
law." 

"And  in  what  respect  do  you  think  the  Westmore 
hands  unfairly  treated?" 

Amherst  paused  to  measure  his  words.  "The  ques- 
tion, as  you  say,  is  a  large  one,"  he  rejoined.  "It  has 
its  roots  in  the  way  the  business  is  organized — in  the 
traditional  attitude  of  the  company  toward  the  opera- 
tives. I  hoped  that  Mrs.  Westmore  might  return  to 
the  mills — might  visit  some  of  the  people  in  their  houses. 
Seeing  their  way  of  living,  it  might  have  occurred  to  her 
to  ask  a  reason  for  it — and  one  enquiry  would  have  led 
to  another.  She  spoke  this  morning  of  going  to  the 
hospital  to  see  Dillon." 

"She  did  go  to  the  hospital:  I  went  with  her.  But 
as  Dillon  was  sleeping,  and  as  the  matron  told  us  he 
was  much  better — a  piece  of  news  which,  I  am  happy 
to  say,  Dr.  Disbrow  has  just  confirmed — she  did  not 
go  up  to  the  ward." 

Amherst  was  silent,  and  Mr.  Tredegar  pursued:  "I 
gather,  from  your  bringing  up  Dillon's  case,  that  for 
some  reason  you  consider  it  typical  of  the  defects  you 
find  in  Mr.  Truscomb's  management.  Suppose,  there- 
fore, we  drop  generalizations,  and  confine  ourselves  to 
the  particular  instance.  What  wrong,  in  your  view, 
has  been  done  the  Dillons  ? " 

He  turned,  as  he  spoke,  to  extract  a  cigar  from  the 
[78] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

box  at  bis  elbow.  "Let  me  offer  you  one,  Mr.  Am- 
herst:  we  shall  talk  more  comfortably,"  he  suggested 
with  distant  affability;  but  Amherst,  with  a  gesture  of 
refusal,  plunged  into  his  exposition  of  the  Dillon  case. 
He  tried  to  put  the  facts  succinctly,  presenting  them  in 
their  bare  ugliness,  without  emotional  drapery;  setting 
forth  Dillon's  good  record  for  sobriety  and  skill,  dwell- 
ing on  the  fact  that  his  wife's  ill-health  was  the  result 
of  perfectly  remediable  conditions  in  the  work-rooms, 
and  giving  his  reasons  for  the  belief  that  the  accident 
had  been  caused,  not  by  Dillon's  carelessness,  but  by 
the  over-crowding  of  the  carding-room.  Mr.  Tredegar 
listened  attentively,  though  the  cloud  of  cigar-smoke 
between  himself  and  Amherst  masked  from  the  latter 
his  possible  changes  of  expression.  When  he  removed 
his  cigar,  his  face  looked  smaller  than  ever,  as  though 
desiccated  by  the  fumes  of  the  tobacco. 

"Have  you  ever  called  Mr.  Gaines's  attention  to 
these  matters?" 

"No:  that  would  have  been  useless.  He  has  always 
refused  to  discuss  the  condition  of  the  mills  with  any 
one  but  the  manager." 

"H'm — that  would  seem  to  prove  that  Mr.  Gaines, 
who  lives  here,  sees  as  much  reason  for  trusting  Trus- 
comb's  judgment  as  Mr.  Westmore,  who  delegated  his 
authority  from  a  distance." 

Amherst  did  not  take  this  up,  and  after  a  pause  Mr. 
[79] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Tredegar  went  on:  "You  know,  of  course,  the  answers 
I  might  make  to  such  an  indictment.  As  a  lawyer,  I 
might  call  your  attention  to  the  employe's  waiver  of 
risk,  to  the  strong  chances  of  contributory  negligence, 
and  so  on ;  but  happily  in  this  case  such  arguments  are 
superfluous.  You  are  apparently  not  aware  that  Dil- 
lon's injury  is  much  slighter  than  it  ought  to  be  to 
serve  your  purpose.  Dr.  Disbrow  has  just  told  us 
that  he  will  probably  get  off  with  the  loss  of  a  finger; 
and  I  need  hardly  say  that,  whatever  may  have  been 
Dillon's  own  share  in  causing  the  accident — and  as  to 
this,  as  you  admit,  opinions  differ — Mrs.  Westmore 
will  assume  all  the  expenses  of  his  nursing,  besides 
making  a  liberal  gift  to  his  wife."  Mr.  Tredegar  laid 
down  his  cigar  and  drew  forth  a  silver-mounted  note- 
case. "Here,  in  fact,"  he  continued,  "is  a  cheque 
which  she  asks  you  to  transmit,  and  which,  as  I  think 
you  will  agree,  ought  to  silence,  on  your  part  as  well 
as  Mrs.  Dillon's,  any  criticism  of  Mrs.  Westmore's 
dealings  with  her  operatives." 

The  blood  rose  to  Amherst's  forehead,  and  he  just 
restrained  himself  from  pushing  back  the  cheque  which 
Mr.  Tredegar  had  laid  on  the  table  between  them. 

"There  is  no  question  of  criticizing  Mrs.  Westmore's 

dealings  with  her  operatives — as  far  as  I  know,  she  has 

had  none  as  yet,"  he  rejoined,  unable  to  control  his 

voice  as  completely  as  his  hand.     "And  the  proof  of 

[80] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

it  is  the  impunity  with  which  her  agents  deceive  her — 
in  this  case,  for  instance,  of  Dillon's  injury.  Dr.  Dis- 
brow,  who  is  Mr.  Tmscomb's  brother-in-law,  and  apt 
to  be  influenced  by  his  views,  assures  you  that  the  man 
will  get  off  with  the  loss  of  a  finger;  but  some  one 
equally  competent  to  speak  told  me  last  night  that  he 
would  lose  not  only  his  hand  but  his  arm." 

Amherst's  voice  had  swelled  to  a  deep  note  of  anger, 
and  with  his  tossed  hair,  and  eyes  darkening  under  fur- 
rowed brows,  he  presented  an  image  of  revolutionary  vio- 
lence which  deepened  the  disdain  on  Mr.  Tredegar's  lip, 

"Some  one  equally  competent  to  speak?  Are  you 
prepared  to  name  this  anonymous  authority  ? " 

Amherst  hesitated.  "No — I  shall  have  to  ask  you 
to  take  my  word  for  it,"  he  returned  with  a  shade  of 
embarrassment. 

"Ah — "  Mr.  Tredegar  murmured,  giving  to  the  ex- 
pressive syllable  its  utmost  measure  of  decent  exulta- 
tion. 

Amherst  quivered  under  the  thin  lash,  and  broke  out: 
"It  is  all  you  have  required  of  Dr.  Disbrow — "  but  at 
this  point  Mr.  Tredegar  rose  to  his  feet. 

"My  dear  sir,  your  resorting  to  such  arguments  con- 
vinces me  that  nothing  is  to  be  gained  by  prolonging 
our  talk.  I  will  not  even  take  up  your  insinuations 
against  two  of  the  most  respected  men  in  the  commu- 
nity—such charges  reflect  only  on  those  who  make  them." 
[81  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Amherst,  whose  flame  of  anger  had  subsided  with 
the  sudden  sense  of  its  futility,  received  this  in  silence, 
and  the  lawyer,  reassured,  continued  with  a  touch  of 
condescension:  "My  only  specific  charge  from  Mrs. 
Westmore  was  to  hand  you  this  cheque;  but,  in  spite 
of  what  has  passed,  I  take  it  upon  myself  to  add,  in  her 
behalf,  that  your  conduct  of  today  will  not  be  allowed 
to  weigh  against  your  record  at  the  mills,  and  that  the 
extraordinary  charges  you  have  seen  fit  to  bring  against 
your  superiors  will — if  not  repeated — simply  be  ig- 
nored " 

When,  the  next  morning  at  about  ten,  Mrs.  Eustace 
Ansell  joined  herself  to  the  two  gentlemen  who  still 
lingered  over  a  desultory  breakfast  in  Mrs.  Westmore's 
dining-room,  she  responded  to  their  greeting  with  less 
than  her  usual  vivacity. 

It  was  one  of  Mrs.  Ansell's  arts  to  bring  to  the  break- 
fast-table just  the  right  shade  of  sprightliness,  a  warmth 
subdued  by  discretion  as  the  early  sunlight  is  tempered 
by  the  lingering  coolness  of  night.  She  was,  in  short, 
as  fresh,  as  temperate,  as  the  hour,  yet  without  the 
concomitant  chill  which  too  often  marks  its  human 
atmosphere:  rather  her  soft  effulgence  dissipated  the 
morning  frosts,  opening  pinched  spirits  to  a  promise  of 
midday  warmth.  But  on  this  occasion  a  mist  of  un- 
certainty hung  on  her  smile,  and  veiled  the  glance  which 
[82] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

she  turned  on  the  contents  of  the  heavy  silver  dishes 
successively  presented  to  her  notice.  When,  at  the 
conclusion  of  this  ceremony,  the  servants  had  with- 
drawn, she  continued  for  a  moment  to  stir  her  tea  in 
silence,  while  her  glance  travelled  from  Mr.  Tredegar, 
sunk  in  his  morning  mail,  to  Mr.  Langhope,  who 
leaned  back  resignedly  in  his  chair,  trying  to  solace 
himself  with  Hanaford  Banner,  till  midday  should 
bring  him  a  sight  of  the  metropolitan  press. 

"I  suppose  you  know,"  she  said  suddenly,  "that 
Bessy  has  telegraphed  for  Cicely,  and  made  her  ar- 
rangements to  stay  here  another  week." 

Mr.  Langhope's  stick  slipped  to  the  floor  with  the 
sudden  displacement  of  his  whole  lounging  person,  and 
Mr.  Tredegar,  removing  his  tortoise-shell  reading- 
glasses,  put  them  hastily  into  their  case,  as  though  to 
declare  for  instant  departure. 

"My  dear  Maria — "  Mr.  Langhope  gasped,  while 
she  rose  and  restored  his  stick. 

"She  considers  it,  then,  her  duty  to  wait  and  see 
Truscomb?"  the  lawyer  asked;  and  Mrs.  Ansell,  re- 
gaining her  seat,  murmured  discreetly:  "She  puts  it 
so — yes." 

"My  dear  Maria — "  Mr.  Langhope  repeated  help- 
lessly, tossing  aside  his  paper  and  drawing  his  chair  up 
to  the  table. 

"  But  it  would  be  perfectly  easy  to  return :  it  is  quite 
[83] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

unnecessary  to  wait  here  for  his  recovery,"  Mr.  Tred- 
egar  pursued,  as  though  setting  forth  a  fact  which  had 
not  hitherto  presented  itself  to  the  more  limited  intelli- 
gence of  his  hearers. 

Mr.  Langhope  emitted  a  short  laugh,  and  Mrs.  An- 
sell  answered  gently:  "She  says  she  detests  the  long 
journey." 

Mr.  Tredegar  rose  and  gathered  up  his  letters  with 
a  gesture  of  annoyance.  "In  that  case — if  I  had  been 
notified  earlier  of  this  decision,  I  might  have  caught 
the  morning  train,"  he  interrupted  himself,  glancing 
resentfully  at  his  watch. 

"Oh,  don't  leave  us,  Tredegar,"  Mr.  Langhope  en- 
treated. "We'll  reason  with  her — we'll  persuade  her 
to  go  back  by  the  three-forty." 

Mrs.  Ansell  smiled.  "She  telegraphed  at  seven. 
Cicely  and  the  governess  are  already  on  their  way." 

"At  seven?  But,  my  dear  friend,  why  on  earth 
didn't  you  tell  us?" 

"I  didn't  know  till  a  few  minutes  ago.  Bessy  called 
me  in  as  I  was  coming  down." 

"Ah — "  Mr.  Langhope  murmured,  meeting  her 
eyes  for  a  fraction  of  a  second.  In  the  encounter,  she 
appeared  to  communicate  something  more  than  she 
had  spoken,  for  as  he  stooped  to  pick  up  his  paper  he 
said,  more  easily:  "My  dear  Tredegar,  if  we're  in  a 
box  there's  no  reason  why  we  should  force  you  into  it 
[84] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

too.  Ring  for  Ropes,  and  we'll  look  up  a  train  for 
you." 

Mr.  Tredegar  appeared  slightly  ruffled  at  this  prompt 
acquiescence  in  his  threatened  departure.  "  Of  course, 
if  I  had  been  notified  in  advance,  I  might  have  ar- 
ranged to  postpone  my  engagements  another  day;  but 
in  any  case,  it  is  quite  out  of  the  question  that  I  should 
return  in  a  week — and  quite  unnecessary,"  he  added, 
snapping  his  lips  shut  as  though  he  were  closing  his 
last  portmanteau. 

"Oh,  quite — quite,"  Mr.  Langhope  assented.  "It 
isn't,  in  fact,  in  the  least  necessary  for  any  of  us  either 
to  stay  on  now  or  to  return.  Truscomb  could  come 
to  Long  Island  when  he  recovers,  and  answer  any  ques- 
tions we  may  have  to  put;  but  if  Bessy  has  sent  for 
the  child,  we  must  of  course  put  off  going  for  today — 
at  least  I  must,"  he  added  sighing,  "and,  though 
I  know  it's  out  of  the  question  to  exact  such  a  sacri- 
fice from  you,  I  have  a  faint  hope  that  our  delightful 
friend  here,  with  the  altruistic  spirit  of  her  sex " 

"Oh,  I  shall  enjoy  it — my  maid  is  unpacking,"  Mrs. 
Ansell  gaily  affirmed;  and  Mr.  Tredegar,  shrugging 
his  shoulders,  said  curtly:  "In  that  case  I  will  ring  for 
the  time-table." 

When  he  had  withdrawn  to  consult  it  in  the  seclusion 
of  the  library,  and  Mrs.  Ansell,  affecting  a  sudden  de- 
sire for  a  second  cup  of  tea,  had  reseated  herself  to 
[85-] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

await  the  replenishment  of  the  kettle,  Mr.  Langhope 
exchanged  his  own  chair  for  a  place  at  her  side. 

"Now  what  on  earth  does  this  mean?"  he  asked, 
lighting  a  cigarette  in  response  to  her  slight  nod  of 
consent. 

Mrs.  Ansell's  gaze  lost  itself  in  the  depths  of  the 
empty  tea-pot. 

"A  number  of  things — or  any  one  of  them,"  she  said 
at  length,  extending  her  arm  toward  the  tea-caddy. 

"For  instance — ?"  he  rejoined,  following  appre- 
ciatively the  movements  of  her  long  slim  hands. 

She  raised  her  head  and  met  his  eyes.  "For  in- 
stance: it  may  mean — don't  resent  the  suggestion — that 
you  and  Mr.  Tredegar  were  not  quite  well-advised  in  per- 
suading her  not  to  see  Mr.  Amherst  yesterday  evening." 

Mr.  Langhope  uttered  an  exclamation  of  surprise. 

"But,  my  dear  Maria — in  the  name  of  reason.  .  . 
why,  after  the  doctor's  visit — after  his  coming  here  last 
night,  at  Truscomb's  request,  to  put  the  actual  facts 
before  her — should  she  have  gone  over  the  whole  busi- 
ness again  with  this  interfering  young  fellow?  How, 
in  fact,  could  she  have  done  so,"  he  added,  after  vainly 
waiting  for  her  reply,  "without  putting  a  sort  of  slight 
on  Truscomb,  who  is,  after  all,  the  only  person  entitled 
to  speak  with  authority?" 

Mrs.  Ansell  received  his  outburst  in  silence,  and  the 
butler,  reappearing  with  the  kettle  and  fresh  toast,  gave 
[86] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

her  the  chance  to  prolong  her  pause  for  a  full  minute. 
When  the  door  had  closed  on  him,  she  said:  "Judged 
by  reason,  your  arguments  are  unanswerable;  but  when 
it  comes  to  a  question  of  feeling " 

"Feeling?  What  kind  of  feeling ?  You  don't  mean 
to  suggest  anything  so  preposterous  as  that  Bessy ?  " 

She  made  a  gesture  of  smiling  protest.  "I  confess 
it  is  to  be  regretted  that  his  mother  is  a  lady,  and  that 
he  looks— you  must  have  noticed  it? — so  amazingly 
like  the  portraits  of  the  young  Schiller.  But  I  only 
meant  that  Bessy  forms  all  her.  opinions  emotionally; 
and  that  she  must  have  been  very  strongly  affected  by 
the  scene  Mr.  Tredegar  described  to  us." 

"Ah,"  Mr.  Langhope  interjected,  replying  first  to 
her  parenthesis,  "how  a  woman  of  your  good  sense 
stumbled  on  that  idea  of  hunting  up  the  mother — !" 
but  Mrs.  Ansell  answered,  with  a  slight  grimace:  "My 
dear  Henry,  if  you  could  see  the  house  they  live  in  you'd 
think  I  had  been  providentially  guided  there!"  and, 
reverting  to  the  main  issue,  he  went  on  fretfully:  "But 
why,  after  hearing  the  true  version  of  the  facts,  should 
Bessy  still  be  influenced  by  that  sensational  scene? 
Even  if  it  was  not,  as  Tredegar  suspects,  cooked  up 
expressly  to  take  her  in,  she  must  see  that  the  hospital 
doctor  is,  after  all,  as  likely  as  any  one  to  know  how 
the  accident  really  happened,  and  how  seriously  the 
fellow  is  hurt." 

[87] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"There's  the  point.  Why  should  Bessy  believe  Dr. 
Disbrow  rather  than  Mr.  Amherst?" 

"For  the  best  of  reasons — because  Disbrow  has 
nothing  to  gain  by  distorting  the  facts,  whereas  this 
young  Amherst,  as  Tredegar  pointed  out,  has  the  very 
obvious  desire  to  give  Truscomb  a  bad  name  and  shove 
himself  into  his  place." 

Mrs.  Ansell  contemplatively  turned  the  rings  upon 
her  fingers.  "From  what  I  saw  of  Amherst  I'm  in- 
clined to  think  that,  if  that  is  his  object,  he  is  too  clever 
to  have  shown  his  hand  so  soon.  But  if  you  are  right, 
was  there  not  all  the  more  reason  for  letting  Bessy  see 
him  and  find  out  as  soon  as  possible  what  he  was  aim- 
ing at?" 

"If  one  could  have  trusted  her  to  find  out — but  you 
credit  my  poor  child  with  more  penetration  than  I've 
ever  seen  in  her." 

"Perhaps  you've  looked  for  it  at  the  wrong  time — 
and  about  the  wrong  things.  Bessy  has  the  penetra- 
tion of  the  heart." 

"The  heart!  You  make  mine  jump  when  you  use 
such  expressions." 

"Oh,  I  use  this  one  in  a  general  sense.  But  I  want 
to  help  you  to  keep  it  from  acquiring  a  more  restricted 
significance." 

"  Restricted — to  the  young  man  himself  ?  " 

Mrs.  Ansell's  expressive  hands  seemed  to  commit  the 
[88] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

question  to  fate.  "All  I  ask  you  to  consider  for  the 
present  is  that  Bessy  is  quite  unoccupied  and  excessively 
bored." 

"Bored  ?  Why,  she  has  everything  on  earth  she  can 
want!" 

"The  ideal  state  for  producing  boredom — the  only 
atmosphere  in  which  it  really  thrives.  And  besides — 
to  be  humanly  inconsistent — there's  just  one  thing  she 
hasn't  got." 

"Well?"  Mr.  Langhope  groaned,  fortifying  himself 
with  a  second  cigarette. 

"An  occupation  for  that  rudimentary  little  organ, 
the  mention  of  which  makes  you  jump." 

"There  you  go  again !  Good  heavens,  Maria,  do  you 
want  to  encourage  her  to  fall  in  love?" 

"Not  with  a  man,  just  at  present,  but  with  a  hobby, 
an  interest,  by  all  means.  If  she  doesn't,  the  man  will 
take  the  place  of  the  interest — there's  a  vacuum  to  be 
filled,  and  human  nature  abhors  a  vacuum." 

Mr.  Langhope  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "I  don't 
follow  you.  She  adored  her  husband." 

His  friend's  fine  smile  was  like  a  magnifying  glass 
silently  applied  to  the  gross  stupidity  of  his  remark. 
"Oh,  I  don't  say  it  was  a  great  passion — but  they  got 
on  perfectly,"  he  corrected  himself. 

"So  perfectly  that  you  must  expect  her  to  want  a 
little  storm  and  stress  for  a  change.  The  mere  fact 
[89] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

that  you  and  Mr.  Tredegar  objected  to  her  seeing  Mr. 
Amherst  last  night  has  roused  the  spirit  of  opposition 
in  her.  A  year  ago  she  hadn't  any  spirit  of  opposition." 

"There  was  nothing  for  her  to  oppose — poor  Dick 
made  her  life  so  preposterously  easy." 

"  My  ingenuous  friend !  Do  you  still  think  that's  any 
reason  ?  The  fact  is,  Bessy  wasn't  awake,  she  wasn't 
even  born,  then.  .  .  .  She  is  now,  and  you  know  the 
infant's  first  conscious  joy  is  to  smash  things." 

"It  will  be  rather  an  expensive  joy  if  the  mills  are 
the  first  thing  she  smashes." 

"Oh  I  imagine  the  mills  are  pretty  substantial.  I 
should,  I  own,"  Mrs.  Ansell  smiled,  "not  object  to  see- 
ing her  try  her  teeth  on  them." 

"Which,  in  terms  of  practical  conduct,  means ?" 

"That  I  advise  you  not  to  disapprove  of  her  staying 
on,  or  of  her  investigating  the  young  man's  charges. 
You  must  remember  that  another  peculiarity  of  the 
infant  mind  is  to  tire  soonest  of  the  toy  that  no  one 
tries  to  take  away  from  it." 

"  Que  diable  !  But  suppose  Truscomb  turns  rusty 
at  this  very  unusual  form  of  procedure  ?  Perhaps  you 
don't  quite  know  how  completely  he  represents  the 
prosperity  of  the  mills." 

"All  the  more  reason,"  Mrs.  Ansell  persisted,  rising 
at  the  sound  of  Mr.  Tredegar's  approach.  "For  don't 
you  perceive,  my  poor  distracted  friend,  that  if  Trus- 

[90] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

comb  turns  rusty,  as  he  undoubtedly  will,  the  inevitable 
result  will  be  his  manager's  dismissal — and  that  there- 
after there  will  presumably  be  peace  in  Warsaw  ?  " 

"Ah,  you  divinely  wicked  woman!"  cried  Mr.  Lang- 
hope,  snatching  at  an  appreciative  pressure  of  her  hand 
as  the  lawyer  reappeared  in  the  doorway. 


VI 


BEFORE  daylight  that  same  morning  Amherst, 
dressing  by  the  gas-flame  above  his  cheap  wash- 
stand,  strove  to  bring  some  order  into  his  angry  thoughts. 
It  humbled  him  to  feel  his  purpose  tossing  rudderless 
on  unruly  waves  of  emotion,  yet  strive  as  he  would  he 
could  not  regain  a  hold  on  it.  The  events  of  the  last 
twenty-four  hours  had  been  too  rapid  and  unexpected 
for  him  to  preserve  his  usual  clear  feeling  of  mastery; 
and  he  had,  besides,  to  reckon  with  the  first  complete 
surprise  of  his  senses.  His  way  of  life  had  excluded 
him  from  all  contact  with  the  subtler  feminine  influ- 
ences, and  the  primitive  side  of  the  relation  left  his 
imagination  untouched.  He  was  therefore  the  more  as- 
sailable by  those  refined  forms  of  the  ancient  spell  that 
lurk  in  delicacy  of  feeling  interpreted  by  loveliness  of 
face.  By  his  own  choice  he  had  cut  himself  off  from 
all  possibility  of  such  communion;  had  accepted  com- 
plete abstinence  for  that  part  of  his  nature  which  might 
[91] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

have  offered  a  refuge  from  the  stern  prose  of  his  daily 
task.  But  his  personal  indifference  to  his  surroundings 
— deliberately  encouraged  as  a  defiance  to  the  attrac- 
tions of  the  life  he  had  renounced — proved  no  defence 
against  this  appeal;  rather,  the  meanness  of  his  sur- 
roundings combined  with  his  inherited  refinement  of 
taste  to  deepen  the  effect  of  Bessy's  charm. 

As  he  reviewed  the  incidents  of  the  past  hours,  a  re- 
action of  self-derision  came  to  his  aid.  What  was  this 
exquisite  opportunity  from  which  he  had  cut  himself 
off  ?  What,  to  reduce  the  question  to  a  personal  issue, 
had  Mrs.  Westmore  said  or  done  that,  on  the  part  of  a 
plain  woman,  would  have  quickened  his  pulses  by  the 
least  fraction  of  a  second  ?  Why,  it  was  only  the  old 
story  of  the  length  of  Cleopatra's  nose!  Because  her 
eyes  were  a  heavenly  vehicle  for  sympathy,  because  her 
voice  was  pitched  to  thrill  the  tender  chords,  he  had 
been  deluded  into  thinking  that  she  understood  and  re- 
sponded to  his  appeal.  And  her  own  emotions  had 
been  wrought  upon  by  means  as  cheap:  it  was  only  the 
obvious,  theatrical  side  of  the  incident  that  had  affected 
her.  If  Dillon's  wife  had  been  old  and  ugly,  would 
she  have  been  clasped  to  her  employer's  bosom?  A 
more  expert  knowledge  of  the  sex  would  have  told  Am- 
herst  that  such  ready  sympathy  is  likely  to  be  followed 
by  as  prompt  a  reaction  of  indifference.  Luckily  Mrs. 
Westmore's  course  had  served  as  a  corrective  for  his 
[92] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

lack  of  experience;  she  had  even,  as  it  appeared,  been 
at  some  pains  to  hasten  the  process  of  disillusionment. 
This  timely  discipline  left  him  blushing  at  his  own  in- 
sincerity; for  he  now  saw  that  he  had  risked  his  future 
not  because  of  his  zeal  for  the  welfare  of  the  mill- 
hands,  but  because  Mrs.  Westmore's  look  was  like  sun- 
shine on  his  frozen  senses,  and  because  he  was  resolved, 
at  any  cost,  to  arrest  her  attention,  to  associate  himself 
with  her  by  the  only  means  in  his  power. 

Well,  he  deserved  to  fail  with  such  an  end  in  view; 
and  the  futility  of  his  scheme  was  matched  by  the 
vanity  of  his  purpose.  In  the  cold  light  of  disenchant- 
ment it  seemed  as  though  he  had  tried  to  build  an  im- 
pregnable fortress  out  of  nursery  blocks.  How  could 
he  have  foreseen  anything  but  failure  for  so  preposterous 
an  attempt  ?  His  breach  of  discipline  would  of  course 
be  reported  at  once  to  Mr.  Gaines  and  Truscomb ;  and 
the  manager,  already  jealous  of  his  assistant's  popular- 
ity with  the  hands,  which  was  a  tacit  criticism  of  his 
own  methods,  would  promptly  seize  the  pretext  to  be 
rid  of  him.  Amherst  was  aware  that  only  his  tech- 
nical efficiency,  and  his  knack  of  getting  the  maximum 
of  work  out  of  the  operatives,  had  secuVed  him  from 
Truscomb's  animosity.  From  the  outset  there  had 
been  small  sympathy  between  the  two;  but  the  scarc- 
ity of  competent  and  hard-working  assistants  had  made 
Truscomb  endure  him  for  what  he  was  worth  to  the 
1J93] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

mills.  Now,  however,  his  own  folly  had  put  the  match 
to  the  manager's  smouldering  dislike,  and  he  saw  him- 
self, in  consequence,  discharged  and  black-listed,  and 
perhaps  roaming  for  months  in  quest  of  a  job.  He 
knew  the  efficiency  of  that  far-reaching  system  of 
defamation  whereby  the  employers  of  labour  pursue 
and  punish  the  subordinate  who  incurs  their  displea- 
sure. In  the  case  of  a  mere  operative  this  secret  per- 
secution often  worked  complete  ruin;  and  even  to  a 
man  of  Amherst's  worth  it  opened  the  dispiriting  pros- 
pect of  a  long  struggle  for  rehabilitation. 

Deep  down,  he  suffered  most  at  the  thought  that  his 
blow  for  the  operatives  had  failed;  but  on  the  surface 
it  was  the  manner  of  his  failure  that  exasperated  him. 
For  it  seemed  to  prove  him  unfit  for  the  very  work  to 
which  he  was  drawn:  that  yearning  to  help  the  world 
forward  that,  in  some  natures,  sets  the  measure  to 
which  the  personal  adventure  must  keep  step.  Am- 
herst  had  hitherto  felt  himself  secured  by  his  insight 
and  self-control  from  the  emotional  errors  besetting 
the  way  of  the  enthusiast;  and  behold,  he  had  stum- 
bled into  the  first  sentimental  trap  in  his  path,  and 
tricked  his  eyes  with  a  Christmas-chromo  vision  of 
lovely  woman  dispensing  coals  and  blankets !  Luckily, 
though  such  wounds  to  his  self-confidence  cut  deep,  he 
could  apply  to  them  the  antiseptic  of  an  unfailing 
humour;  and  before  he  had  finished  dressing,  the  pic- 
[94] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

hire  of  his  wide  schemes  of  social  reform  contracting 
to  a  blue-eyed  philanthropy  of  cheques  and  groceries, 
had  provoked  a  reaction  of  laughter.  Perhaps  the 
laughter  came  too  soon,  and  rang  too  loud,  to  be  true 
to  the  core;  but  at  any  rate  it  healed  the  edges  of  his 
hurt,  and  gave  him  a  sound  surface  of  composure. 

But  he  could  not  laugh  away  the  thought  of  the  trials 
to  which  his  intemperance  had  probably  exposed  his 
mother;  and  when,  at  the  breakfast-table,  from  which 
Duplain  had  already  departed,  she  broke  into  praise 
of  their  visitor,  it  was  like  a  burning  irritant  on  his 
wound. 

"What  a  face,  John!  Of  course  I  don't  often  see 
people  of  that  kind  now — "  the  words,  falling  from  her 
too  simply  to  be  reproachful,  wrung  him,  for  that,  all 
the  more — "but  I'm  sure  that  kind  of  soft  loveliness  is 
rare  everywhere;  like  a  sweet  summer  morning  with 
the  mist  on  it.  The  Gaines  girls,  now,  are  my  idea  of 
the  modern  type;  very  handsome,  of  course,  but  you 
see  just  how  handsome  the  first  minute.  I  like  a  story 
that  keeps  one  wondering  till  the  end.  It  was  very 
kind  of  Maria  Ansell,"  Mrs.  Amherst  wandered  happily 
on,  "to  come  and  hunt  me  out  yesterday,  and  I  enjoyed 
our  quiet  talk  about  old  times.  But  what  I  liked  best 
was  seeing  Mrs.  Westmore — and,  oh,  John,  if  she  came 
to  live  here,  what  a  benediction  to  the  mills!" 

Amherst  was  silent,  moved  most  of  all  by  the  unim- 
[95] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

paired  simplicity  of  heart  with  which  his  mother  could 
take  up  past  relations,  and  open  her  meagre  life  to  the 
high  visitations  of  grace  and  fashion,  without  a  tinge  of 
self-consciousness  or  apology.  "I  shall  never  be  as 
genuine  as  that,"  he  thought,  remembering  how  he 
had  wished  to  have  Mrs.  Westmore  know  that  he  was 
of  her  own  class.  How  mixed  our  passions  are,  and 
how  elastic  must  be  the  word  that  would  cover  any  one 
of  them!  Amherst's,  at  that  moment,  were  all  stained 
with  the  deep  wound  to  his  self-love. 

The  discolouration  he  carried  in  his  eye  made  the 
mill-village  seem  more  than  commonly  cheerless  and 
ugly  as  he  walked  over  to  the  office  after  breakfast. 
Beyond  the  grim  roof-line  of  the  factories  a  dazzle  of 
rays  sent  upward  from  banked  white  clouds  the  promise 
of  another  brilliant  day;  and  he  reflected  that  Mrs. 
Westmore  would  soon  be  speeding  home  to  the  joy  of 
a  gallop  over  the  plains. 

Far  different  was  the  task  that  awaited  him — yet  it 
gave  him  a  pang  to  think  that  he  might  be  performing 
it  for  the  last  time.  In  spite  of  Mr.  Tredegar's  assur- 
ances, he  was  certain  that  the  report  of  his  conduct 
must  by  this  time  have  reached  the  President,  and  been 
transmitted  to  Truscomb;  the  latter  was  better  that 
morning,  and  the  next  day  he  would  doubtless  call  his 
rebellious  assistant  to  account.  Amherst,  meanwhile, 
took  up  his  routine  with  a  dull  heart.  Even  should  his 
[96] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

offense  be  condoned,  his  occupation  presented,  in  itself, 
little  future  to  a  man  without  money  or  powerful  con- 
nections. Money !  He  had  spurned  the  thought  of  it  in 
choosing  his  work,  yet  he  now  saw  that,  without  its  aid, 
he  was  powerless  to  accomplish  the  object  to  which  his 
personal  desires  had  been  sacrificed.  His  love  of  his 
craft  had  gradually  been  merged  in  the  larger  love  for 
his  fellow-workers,  and  in  the  resulting  desire  to  lift 
and  widen  their  lot.  He  had  once  fancied  that  this 
end  might  be  attained  by  an  internal  revolution  in  the 
management  of  the  Westmore  mills;  that  he  might 
succeed  in  creating  an  industrial  object-lesson  con- 
spicuous enough  to  point  the  way  to  wiser  law-making 
and  juster  relations  between  the  classes.  But  the  last 
hours'  experiences  had  shown  him  how  vain  it  was 
to  assault  single-handed  the  strong  barrier  between 
money  and  labour,  and  how  his  own  dash  at  the  breach 
had  only  thrust  him  farther  back  into  the  obscure  ranks 
of  the  strugglers.  It  was,  after  all,  only  through  poli- 
tics that  he  could  return  successfully  to  the  attack;  and 
financial  independence  was  the  needful  preliminary  to 
a  political  career.  It  he  had  stuck  to  the  law  he  might, 
by  this  time,  have  been  nearer  his  goal;  but  then  the 
goal  might  not  have  mattered,  since  it  was  only  by 
living  among  the  workers  that  he  had  learned  to  care 
for  their  fate.  And  rather  than  have  forfeited  that 
poignant  yet  mighty  vision  of  the  onward  groping  of 
[97] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

the  mass,  rather  than  have  missed  the  widening  of  his 
own  nature  that  had  come  through  sharing  their  hopes 
and  pains,  he  would  still  have  turned  from  the  easier 
way,  have  chosen  the  deeper  initiation  rather  than  the 
readier  attainment. 

But  this  philosophic  view  of  the  situation  was  a  mere 
thread  of  light  on  the  farthest  verge  of  his  sky:  much 
nearer  were  the  clouds  of  immediate  care,  amid  which 
his  own  folly,  and  his  mother's  possible  suffering  from 
it,  loomed  darkest;  and  these  considerations  made  him 
resolve  that,  if  his  insubordination  were  overlooked,  he 
would  swallow  the  affront  of  a  pardon,  and  continue 
for  the  present  in  the  mechanical  performance  of  his 
duties.  He  had  just  brought  himself  to  this  leaden 
state  of  acquiescence  when  one  of  the  clerks  in  the  outer 
office  thrust  his  head  in  to  say:  "A  lady  asking  for 
you — "  and  looking  up,  Amherst  beheld  Bessy  West- 
more. 

She  came  in  alone,  with  an  air  of  high  self-possession 
in  marked  contrast  to  her  timidity  and  indecision  of  the 
previous  day.  Amherst  thought  she  looked  taller,  more 
majestic;  so  readily  may  the  upward  slant  of  a  soft 
chin,  the  firmer  line  of  yielding  brows,  add  a  cubit  to 
the  outward  woman.  Her  aspect  was  so  commanding 
that  he  fancied  she  had  come  to  express  her  disap- 
proval of  his  conduct,  to  rebuke  him  for  lack  of  re- 
spect to  Mr.  Tredegar;  but  a  moment  later  it  became 
[98] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

clear,  even  to  his  inexperienced  perceptions,  that  it  was 
not  to  himself  that  her  challenge  was  directed. 

She  advanced  toward  the  seat  he  had  moved  forward, 
but  in  her  absorption  forgot  to  seat  herself,  and  stood 
with  her  clasped  hands  resting  on  the  back  of  the  chair. 

"I  have  come  back  to  talk  to  you,"  she  began,  in  her 
sweet  voice  with  its  occasional  quick  lift  of  appeal.  "I 
knew  that,  in  Mr.  Truscomb's  absence,  it  would  be 
hard  for  you  to  leave  the  mills,  and  there  are  one  or  two 
things  I  want  you  to  explain  before  I  go  away — some 
of  the  things,  for  instance,  that  you  spoke  to  Mr.  Trede- 
gar  about  last  night." 

Amherst's  feeling  of  constraint  returned.  "I'm 
afraid  I  expressed  myself  badly;  I  may  have  annoyed 
him — "  he  began. 

She  smiled  this  away,  as  though  irrelevant  to  the 
main  issue.  "Perhaps  you  don't  quite  understand  each 
other — but  I  am  sure  you  can  make  it  clear  to  me." 
She  sank  into  the  chair,  resting  one  arm  on  the  edge  of 
the  desk  behind  which  he  had  resumed  his  place. 
"That  is  the  reason  why  I  came  alone,"  she  continued. 
"I  never  can  understand  when  a  lot  of  people  are  trying 
to  tell  me  a  thing  all  at  once.  And  I  don't  suppose  I 
care  as  much  as  a  man  would — a  lawyer  especially — 
about  the  forms  that  ought  to  be  observed.  All  I  want 
is  to  find  out  what  is  wrong  and  how  to  remedy  it." 

Her  blue  eyes  met  Amherst's  in  a  look  that  flowed 
[99] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

like  warmth  about  his  heart.  How  should  he  have 
doubted  that  her  feelings  were  as  exquisite  as  her  means 
of  expressing  them?  The  iron  bands  of  distrust  were 
loosened  from  his  spirit,  and  he  blushed  for  his  cheap 
scepticism  of  the  morning.  In  a  woman  so  evidently 
nurtured  in  dependence,  whose  views  had  been  formed, 
and  her  actions  directed,  by  the  most  conventional  in- 
fluences, the  mere  fact  of  coming  alone  to  Westmore, 
in  open  defiance  of  her  advisers,  bespoke  a  persistence 
of  purpose  that  put  his  doubts  to  shame. 

"It  will  make  a  great  difference  to  the  people  here  if 
you  interest  yourself  in  them,"  he  rejoined.  "I  tried 
to  explain  to  Mr.  Tredegar  that  I  had  no  wish  to  criti- 
cise the  business  management  of  the  mills — even  if 
there  had  been  any  excuse  for  my  doing  so — but  that  I 
was  sure  the  condition  of  the  operatives  could  be  very 
much  improved,  without  permanent  harm  to  the  busi- 
ness, by  any  one  who  felt  a  personal  sympathy  for 
them;  and  in  the  end  I  believe  such  sympathy  produces 
better  work,  and  so  benefits  the  employer  materially." 

She  listened  with  her  gentle  look  of  trust,  as  though 
committing  to  him,  with  the  good  faith  of  a  child,  her 
ignorance,  her  credulity,  her  little  rudimentary  convic- 
tions and  her  little  tentative  aspirations,  relying  on  him 
not  to  abuse  or  misdirect  them  in  the  boundless  su- 
premacy of  his  masculine  understanding. 

"That  is  just  what  I  want  you  to  explain  to  me," 
[  100] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

she  said.  "But  first  I  should  like  to  know  more  about 
the  poor  man  who  was  hurt.  I  meant  to  see  his  wife 
yesterday,  but  Mr.  Gaines  told  me  she  would  be  at  work 
till  six,  and  it  would  have  been  difficult  to  go  after  that 
I  did  go  to  the  hospital;  but  the  man  was  sleeping — is 
Dillon  his  name  ? — and  the  matron  told  us  he  was  much 
better.  Dr.  Disbrow  came  in  the  evening  and  said  the 
same  thing — told  us  it  was  all  a  false  report  about  his 
having  been  so  badly  hurt,  and  that  Mr.  Truscomb  was 
very  much  annoyed  when  he  heard  of  your  having  said, 
before  the  operatives,  that  Dillon  would  lose  his  arm." 

Amherst  smiled.  "Ah — Mr.  Truscomb  heard  that? 
Well,  he's  right  to  be  annoyed:  I  ought  not  to  have 
said  it  when  I  did.  But  unfortunately  I  am  not  the 
only  one  to  be  punished.  The  operative  who  tied  on 
the  black  cloth  was  dismissed  this  morning." 

Mrs.  Westmore  flamed  up.  "  Dismissed  for  that  ? 
Oh,  how  unjust — how  cruel!" 

"You  must  look  at  both  sides  of  the  case,"  said  Am- 
herst, finding  it  much  easier  to  remain  temperate  in  the 
glow  he  had  kindled  than  if  he  had  had  to  force  his 
own  heat  into  frozen  veins.  "Of  course  any  act  of  in- 
subordination must  be  reprimanded — but  I  think  a 
reprimand  would  have  been  enough." 

It  gave  him  an  undeniable  throb  of  pleasure  to  find 
that  she  was  not  to  be  checked  by  such  arguments. 
"But  he  shall  be  put  back — I  won't  have  any  one  dis- 
[101] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

charged  for  such  a  reason!  You  must  find  him  for  me 
at  once — you  must  tell  him " 

Once  more  Amherst  gently  restrained  her.  "If 
you'll  forgive  my  saying  so,  I  think  it  is  better  to  let 
him  go,  and  take  his  chance  of  getting  work  elsewhere. 
If  he  were  taken  back  he  might  be  made  to  suffer.  As 
things  a-e  organized  here,  the  hands  are  very  much  at 
the  mercy  of  the  overseers,  and  the  overseer  in  that 
room  would  be  likely  to  make  it  uncomfortable  for  a 
hand  who  had  so  openly  defied  him." 

With  a  heavy  sigh  she  bent  her  puzzled  brows  on  him. 
"How  complicated  it  is!  I  wonder  if  I  shall  ever 
understand  it  all.  You  don't  think  Dillon's  accident 
was  his  own  fault,  then  ? " 

"Certainly  not;  there  are  too  many  cards  in  that 
room.  I  pointed  out  the  fact  to  Mr.  Truscomb  when 
the  new  machines  were  set  up  three  years  ago.  An 
operative  may  be  ever  so  expert  with  his  fingers,  and 
yet  not  learn  to  measure  his  ordinary  movements  quite 
as  accurately  as  if  he  were  an  automaton;  and  that  is 
what  a  man  must  do  to  be  safe  in  the  carding-room." 

She  sighed  again.  "The  more  you  tell  me,  the  more 
difficult  it  all  seems.  Why  is  the  carding-room  so  over- 
crowded ?  " 

"  To  make  it  pay  better,"  Amherst  returned  bluntly; 
and  the  colour  flushed  her  sensitive  skin. 

He  thought  she  was  about  to  punish  him  for  his 
[  102] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

plain-speaking;  but  she  went  on  after  a  pause:  "  What 
you  say  is  dreadful.  Each  thing  seems  to  lead  back  to 
another — and  I  feel  so  ignorant  of  it  all."  She  hesitated 
again,  and  then  said,  turning  her  bluest  glance  on 
him:  "I  am  going  to  be  quite  frank  with  you,  Mr. 
Amherst.  Mr.  Tredegar  repeated  to  me  what  you  said 
to  him  last  night,  and  I  think  he  was  annoyed  that  you 
were  unwilling  to  give  any  proof  of  the  charges  you 
made." 

"  Charges  ?  Ah,"  Amherst  exclaimed,  with  a  start  of 
recollection,  "he  means  my  refusing  to  say  who  told  me 
that  Dr.  Disbrow  was  not  telling  the  truth  about  Dil- 
lon?" 

"Yes.  He  said  that  was  a  very  grave  accusation  to 
make,  and  that  no  one  should  have  made  it  without 
being  able  to  give  proof." 

"That  is  quite  true,  theoretically.  But  in  this  case 
it  would  be  easy  for  you  or  Mr.  Tredegar  to  find  out 
whether  I  was  right." 

"  But  Mr.  Tredegar  said  you  refused  to  say  who  told 

you." 

"I  was  bound  to,  as  it  happened.  But  I  am  not 
bound  to  prevent  your  trying  to  get  the  same  informa- 
tion." 

"Ah — "  she  murmured  understandingly ;  and,  a  sud- 
den thought  striking  him,  he  went  on,  with  a  glance  at 
the  clock:  "If  you  really  wish  to  judge  for  yourself, 
[  103  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

why  not  go  to  the  hospital  now?  I  shall  be  free  in 
five  minutes,  and  could  go  with  you  if  you  wish  it." 

Amherst  had  remembered  the  nurse's  cry  of  recogni- 
tion when  she  saw  Mrs.  Westmore's  face  under  the 
street-lamp;  and  it  immediately  occurred  to  him  that, 
if  the  two  women  had  really  known  each  other,  Mrs. 
Westmore  would  have  no  difficulty  in  obtaining  the  in- 
formation she  wanted;  while,  even  if  they  met  as 
strangers,  the  dark-eyed  girl's  perspicacity  might  still 
be  trusted  to  come  to  their  aid.  It  remained  only  to 
be  seen  how  Mrs.  Westmore  would  take  his  suggestion; 
but  some  instinct  was  already  telling  him  that  the  high- 
handed method  was  the  one  she  really  preferred. 

"To  the  hospital — now?  I  should  like  it  of  all 
things,"  she  exclaimed,  rising  with  what  seemed  an 
almost  childish  zest  in  the  adventure.  "  Of  course  that 
is  the  best  way  of  finding  out.  I  ought  to  have  insisted 
on  seeing  Dillon  yesterday — but  I  begin  to  think  the 
matron  didn't  want  me  to." 

Amherst  left  this  inference  to  work  itself  out  in  her 
mind,  contenting  himself,  as  they  drove  back  to  Hana- 
ford,  with  answering  her  questions  about  Dillon's  family, 
the  ages  of  his  children,  and  his  wife's  health.  Her 
enquiries,  he  noticed,  did  not  extend  from  the  particular 
to  the  general :  her  curiosity,  as  yet,  was  too  purely  per- 
sonal and  emotional  to  lead  to  any  larger  consideration 
of  the  question.  But  this  larger  view  might  grow  out 
[  104] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

of  the  investigation  of  Dillon's  case;  and  meanwhile 
Amherst's  own  purposes  were  momentarily  lost  in  the 
sweet  confusion  of  feeling  her  near  him — of  seeing  the 
exquisite  grain  of  her  skin,  the  way  her  lashes  grew  out 
of  a  dusky  line  on  the  edge  of  the  white  lids,  the  way 
her  hair,  stealing  in  spirals  of  light  from  brow  to  ear, 
wavered  off  into  a  fruity  down  on  the  edge  of  the  cheek. 

At  the  hospital  they  were  protestingly  admitted  by 
Mrs.  Ogan,  though  the  official  "visitors'  hour"  was  not 
till  the  afternoon;  and  beside  the  sufferer's  bed,  Am- 
herst  saw  again  that  sudden  flowering  of  compassion 
which  seemed  the  key  to  his  companion's  beauty:  as 
though  her  lips  had  been  formed  for  consolation  and 
her  hands  for  tender  offices.  It  was  clear  enough  that 
Dillon,  still  sunk  in  a  torpor  broken  by  feverish  toss- 
ings,  was  making  no  perceptible  progress  toward  re- 
covery; and  Mrs.  Ogan  was  reduced  to  murmuring 
some  technical  explanation  about  the  state  of  the  wound 
while  Bessy  hung  above  him  with  reassuring  murmurs 
as  to  his  wife's  fate,  and  promises  that  the  children 
should  be  cared  for 

Amherst  had  noticed,  on  entering,  that  a  new  nurse — 
a  gaping  young  woman  instantly  lost  in  the  study  of 
Mrs.  Westmore's  toilet — had  replaced  the  dark-eyed 
attendant  of  the  day  before;  and  supposing  that  the 
latter  was  temporarily  off  duty,  he  asked  Mrs.  Ogan 
if  she  might  be  seen. 

[  105] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

The  matron's  face  was  a  picture  of  genteel  perplexity. 
"The  other  nurse?  Our  regular  surgical  nurse,  Miss 
Golden,  is  ill — Miss  Hibbs,  here,  is  replacing  her  for 
the  present."  She  indicated  the  gaping  damsel ;  then, 
as  Amherst  persisted:  "Ah,"  she  wondered  negligently, 
"do  you  mean  the  young  lady  you  saw  here  yesterday  ? 
Certainly — I  had  forgotten :  Miss  Brent  was  merely  a — 
er — temporary  substitute.  I  believe  she  was  recom- 
mended to  Dr.  Disbrow  by  one  of  his  patients;  but  we 
found  her  quite  unsuitable — in  fact,  unfitted — and  the 
doctor  discharged  her  this  morning." 

Mrs.  Westmore  had  drawn  near,  and  while  the  ma- 
tron delivered  her  explanation,  with  an  uneasy  sorting 
and  shifting  of  words,  a  quick  signal  of  intelligence 
passed  between  her  hearers.  "You  see?"  Amherst's 
eyes  exclaimed;  "I  see — they  have  sent  her  away  be- 
cause she  told  you,"  Bessy's  flashed  back  in  wrath,  and 
his  answering  look  did  not  deny  her  inference. 

"Do  you  know  where  she  has  gone?"  Amherst  en- 
quired; but  Mrs.  Ogan,  permitting  her  brows  a  faint 
lift  of  surprise,  replied  that  she  had  no  idea  of  Miss 
Brent's  movements,  beyond  having  heard  that  she  was 
to  leave  Hanaford  immediately 

In  the  carriage  Bessy  exclaimed:  "It  was  the  nurse, 
of  course — if  we  could  only  find  her!  Brent — did  Mrs. 
Ogan  say  her  name  was  Brent  ? " 

"Do  you  know  the  name?" 
[  106] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Yes — at  least — but  it  couldn't,  of  course,  be  the 
girl  I  knew " 

"Miss  Brent  saw  you  the  night  you  arrived,  and 
thought  she  recognized  you.  She  said  you  and  she  had 
been  at  some  school  or  convent  together." 

"The  Sacred  Heart?  Then  it  is  Justine  Brent!  I 
heard  they  had  lost  their  money — I  haven't  seen  her  for 
years.  But  how  strange  that  she  should  be  a  hospital 
nurse!  And  why  is  she  at  Hanaford,  I  wonder?" 

"She  was  here  only  on  a  visit;  she  didn't  tell  me 
where  she  lived.  She  said  she  heard  that  a  surgical 
nurse  was  wanted  at  the  hospital,  and  volunteered  her 
services;  I'm  afraid  she  got  small  thanks  for  them." 

"Do  you  really  think  they  sent  her  away  for  talking 
to  you ?  How  do  you  suppose  they  found  out?" 

"I  waited  for  her  last  night  when  she  left  the  hos- 
pital, and  I  suppose  Mrs.  Ogan  or  one  of  the  doctors 
saw  us.  It  was  thoughtless  of  me,"  Amherst  exclaimed 
with  compunction. 

"I  wish  I  had  seen  her — poor  Justine!  We  were  the 
greatest  friends  at  the  convent.  She  was  the  ring- 
leader in  all  our  mischief — I  never  saw  any  one  so  quick 
and  clever.  I  suppose  her  fun  is  all  gone  now." 

For  a  moment  Mrs.  Westmore's  mind  continued  to 
linger  among  her  memories;    then  she  reverted  to  the 
question  of  the  Dillons,  and  of  what  might  best  be  done 
for  them  if  Miss  Brent's  fears  should  be  realized. 
[  107] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

As  the  carriage  neared  her  door  she  turned  to  her 
companion  with  extended  hand.  "Thank  you  so 
much,  Mr.  Amherst.  I  am  glad  you  suggested  that 
Mr.  Truscomb  should  find  some  work  for  Dillon  about 
the  office.  But  I  must  talk  to  you  about  this  again — 
can  you  come  in  this  evening  ? " 


vn 


\  MHERST  could  never  afterward  regain  a  detailed 
2\.  impression  of  the  weeks  that  followed.  They 
lived  in  his  memory  chiefly  as  exponents  of  the  unfore- 
seen, nothing  he  had  looked  for  having  come  to  pass 
in  the  way  or  at  the  time  expected;  while  the  whole 
movement  of  life  was  like  the  noon-day  flow  of  a  river, 
in  which  the  separate  ripples  of  brightness  are  all 
merged  in  one  blinding  glitter.  His  recurring  confer- 
ences with  Mrs.  Westmore  formed,  as  it  were,  the  small 
surprising  kernel  of  fact  about  which  sensations  gath- 
ered and  grew  with  the  swift  ripening  of  a  magician's 
fruit.  That  she  should  remain  on  at  Hanaford  to  look 
into  the  condition  of  the  mills  did  not,  in  itself,  seem 
surprising  to  Amherst;  for  his  short  phase  of  doubt 
had  been  succeeded  by  an  abundant  inflow  of  faith  in 
her  intentions.  It  satisfied  his  inner  craving  for  har- 
mony that  her  face  and  spirit  should,  after  all,  so  cor- 
roborate and  complete  each  other;  that  it  needed  no 
[  108] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

moral  sophistry  to  adjust  her  acts  to  her  appearance, 
her  words  to  the  promise  of  her  smile.  But  her  imme- 
diate confidence  in  him,  her  resolve  to  support  him  in 
his  avowed  insubordination,  to  ignore,  with  the  royal 
license  of  her  sex,  all  that  was  irregular  and  inexpedient 
in  asking  his  guidance  while  the  whole  official  strength 
of  the  company  darkened  the  background  with  a  gather- 
ing storm  of  disapproval — this  sense  of  being  the  glove 
flung  by  her  hand  in  the  face  of  convention,  quickened 
astonishingly  the  flow  of  Amherst's  sensations.  It  was 
as  though  a  mountain-climber,  braced  to  the  strain  of 
a  hard  ascent,  should  suddenly  see  the  way  break  into 
roses,  and  level  itself  in  a  path  for  his  feet. 

On  his  second  visit  he  found  the  two  ladies  together, 
and  Mrs.  Ansell's  smile  of  approval  seemed  to  cast  a 
social  sanction  on  the  episode,  to  classify  it  as  com- 
fortably usual  and  unimportant.  He  could  see  that  her 
friend's  manner  put  Bessy  at  ease,  helping  her  to  ask 
her  own  questions,  and  to  reflect  on  his  suggestions, 
with  less  bewilderment  and  more  self-confidence. 
Mrs.  Ansell  had  the  faculty  of  restoring  to  her  the  be- 
lief in  her  reasoning  powers  that  her  father  could  dis- 
solve in  a  monosyllable. 

The  talk,  on  this  occasion,  had  turned  mainly  on  the 
future  of  the  Dillon  family,  on  the  best  means  of  com- 
pensating for  the  accident,  and,  incidentally,  on  the 
care  of  the  young  children  of  the  mill-colony.  Though 
[  109  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Amherst  did  not  believe  in  the  extremer  forms  of  in- 
dustrial paternalism,  he  was  yet  of  opinion  that,  where 
married  women  were  employed,  the  employer  should 
care  for  their  children.  He  had  been  gradually,  and 
somewhat  reluctantly,  brought  to  this  conviction  by  the 
many  instances  of  unavoidable  neglect  and  suffering 
among  the  children  of  the  women-workers  at  Westmore; 
and  Mrs.  Westmore  took  up  the  scheme  with  all  the 
ardour  of  her  young  motherliness,  quivering  at  the 
thought  of  hungry  or  ailing  children  while  her  Cicely, 
leaning  a  silken  head  against  her,  lifted  puzzled  eyes 
to  her  face. 

On  the  larger  problems  of  the  case  it  was  less  easy  to 
fix  Bessy's  attention;  but  Amherst  was  far  from  being 
one  of  the  extreme  theorists  who  reject  temporary 
remedies  lest  they  defer  the  day  of  general  renewal,  and 
since  he  looked  on  every  gain  in  the  material  condi- 
tion of  the  mill-hands  as  a  step  in  their  moral  growth, 
he  was  quite  willing  to  hold  back  his  fundamental  plans 
while  he  discussed  the  establishment  of  a  nursery,  and 
of  a  night-school  for  the  boys  in  the  mills. 

The  third  time  he  called,  he  found  Mr.  Langhope 
and  Mr.  Halford  Gaines  of  the  company.  The  Presi- 
dent of  the  Westmore  mills  was  a  trim  middle-sized 
man,  whose  high  pink  varnish  of  good  living  would 
have  turned  to  purple  could  he  have  known  Mr.  Lang- 
hope's  opinion  of  his  jewelled  shirt-front  and  the  padded 
[110] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

shoulders  of  his  evening-coat.  Happily  he  had  no 
inkling  of  these  views,  and  was  fortified  in  his  command 
of  the  situation  by  an  unimpaired  confidence  in  his  own 
appearance;  while  Mr.  Langhope,  discreetly  withdrawn 
behind  a  veil  of  cigar-smoke,  let  his  silence  play  like  a 
fine  criticism  over  the  various  phases  of  the  discussion. 
It  was  a  surprise  to  Amherst  to  find  himself  in  Mr. 
Gaines's  presence.  The  President,  secluded  in  his 
high  office,  seldom  visited  the  mills,  and  when  there 
showed  no  consciousness  of  any  presence  lower  than 
Truscomb's;  and  Amherst's  first  thought  was  that,  in 
the  manager's  enforced  absence,  he  was  to  be  called  to 
account  by  the  head  of  the  firm.  But  he  was  affably 
welcomed  by  Mr.  Gaines,  who  made  it  clear  that  his 
ostensible  purpose  in  coming  was  to  hear  Amherst's 
views  as  to  the  proposed  night-schools  and  nursery. 
These  were  pointedly  alluded  to  as  Mrs.  Westmore's 
projects,  and  the  young  man  was  made  to  feel  that  he 
was  merely  called  in  as  a  temporary  adviser  in  Trus- 
comb's absence.  This  was,  in  fact,  the  position  Am- 
herst preferred  to  take,  and  he  scrupulously  restricted 
himself  to  the  answering  of  questions,  letting  Mrs. 
Westmore  unfold  his  plans  as  though  they  had  been 
her  own.  "It  is  much  better,"  he  reflected,  "that  they 
should  all  think  so,  and  she  too,  for  Truscomb  will  be 
on  his  legs  again  in  a  day  or  two,  and  then  my  hours 
will  be  numbered." 

[Ill] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Meanwhile  he  was  surprised  to  find  Mr.  Gaines  oddly 
amenable  to  the  proposed  innovations,  which  he  ap- 
peared to  regard  as  new  fashions  in  mill-management, 
to  be  adopted  for  the  same  cogent  reasons  as  a  new 
cut  in  coat-tails. 

"Of  course  we  want  to  be  up-to-date — there's  no 
reason  why  the  Westmore  mills  shouldn't  do  as  well 
by  their  people  as  any  mills  in  the  country,"  he  af- 
firmed, in  the  tone  of  the  entertainer  accustomed  to 
say:  "I  want  the  thing  done  handsomely."  But  he 
seemed  even  less  conscious  than  Mrs.  Westmore  that 
each  particular  wrong  could  be  traced  back  to  a  radical 
vice  in  the  system.  He  appeared  to  think  that  every 
murmur  of  assent  to  her  proposals  passed  the  sponge, 
once  for  all,  over  the  difficulty  propounded :  as  though 
a  problem  in  algebra  should  be  solved  by  wiping  it  off 
the  blackboard. 

"  My  dear  Bessy,  we  all  owe  you  a  debt  of  gratitude 
for  coming  here,  and  bringing,  so  to  speak,  a  fresh  eye 
to  bear  on  the  subject.  If  I've  been,  perhaps,  a  little 
too  exclusively  absorbed  in  making  the  mills  profitable, 
my  friend  Langhope  will,  I  believe,  not  be  the  first  to — 
er — cast  a  stone  at  me."  Mr.  Gaines,  who  was  the 
soul  of  delicacy,  stumbled  a  little  over  the  awkward 
associations  connected  with  this  figure,  but,  picking  him- 
self up,  hastened  on  to  affirm:  "And  in  that  respect,  I 
think  we  can  challenge  comparison  with  any  industry 

r  1121 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

in  the  state;  but  I  am  the  first  to  admit  that  there  may 
be  another  side,  a  side  that  it  takes  a  woman — a  mother 
— to  see.  For  instance,"  he  threw  in  jocosely,  "I  flat- 
ter myself  that  I  know  how  to  order  a  good  dinner; 
but  I  always  leave  the  flowers  to  my  wife.  And  if 
you'll  permit  me  to  say  so,"  he  went  on,  encouraged  by 
the  felicity  of  his  image,  "I  believe  it  will  produce  a 
most  pleasing  effect — not  only  on  the  operatives  them- 
selves, but  on  the  whole  of  Hanaford — on  our  own  set  of 
people  especially — to  have  you  come  here  and  interest 
yourself  in  the — er — philanthropic  side  of  the  work." 

Bessy  coloured  a  little.  She  blushed  easily,  and  was 
perhaps  not  over-discriminating  as  to  the  quality  of 
praise  received;  but  under  her  ripple  of  pleasure  a 
stronger  feeling  stirred,  and  she  said  hastily:  "I  am 
afraid  I  never  should  have  thought  of  these  things  if 
Mr.  Amherst  had  not  pointed  them  out  to  me." 

Mr.  Gaines  met  this  blandly.  "Very  gratifying  to 
Mr.  Amherst  to  have  you  put  it  in  that  way;  and  I  am 
sure  we  all  appreciate  his  valuable  hints.  Truscomb 
himself  could  not  have  been  more  helpful,  though  his 
larger  experience  will  no  doubt  be  useful  later  on,  in 
developing  and — er — modifying  your  plans." 

It  was  difficult  to  reconcile  this  large  view  of  the  moral 
issue  with  the  existence  of  abuses  which  made  the  man- 
agement of  the  Westmore  mills  as  unpleasantly  no- 
torious in  one  section  of  the  community  as  it  was 
[  113] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

agreeably  notable  in  another.  But  Amherst  was  im- 
partial enough  to  see  that  Mr.  Gaines  was  unconscious 
of  the  incongruities  of  the  situation.  He  left  the  re- 
conciling of  incompatibles  to  Truscomb  with  the  sim- 
ple faith  of  the  .believer  committing  a  like  task  to  his 
maker:  it  was  in  the  manager's  mind  that  the  dark 
processes  of  adjustment  took  place.  Mr.  Gaines  culti- 
vated the  convenient  and  popular  idea  that  by  ignoring 
wrongs  one  is  not  so  much  condoning  as  actually  deny- 
ing their  existence;  and  in  pursuance  of  this  belief  he 
devoutly  abstained  from  studying  the  conditions  at 
Westmore. 

A  farther  surprise  awaited  Amherst  when  Truscomb 
reappeared  in  the  office.  The  manager  was  always  a 
man  of  few  words;  and  for  the  first  days  his  intercourse 
with  his  assistant  was  restricted. to  asking  questions  and 
issuing  orders.  Soon  afterward,  it  became  known  that 
Dillon's  arm  was  to  be  amputated,  and  that  afternoon 
Truscomb  was  summoned  to  see  Mrs.  Westmore.  When 
he  returned  he  sent  for  Amherst;  and  the  young  man 
felt  sure  that  his  hour  had  come. 

He  was  at  dinner  when  the  message  reached  him, 
and  he  knew  from  the  tightening  of  his  mother's  lips 
that  she  too  interpreted  it  in  the  same  way.  He  was 
glad  that  Duplain's  presence  kept  her  from  speaking 
her  fears;  and  he  thanked  her  inwardly  for  the  smile 
with  which  she  watched  him  go. 
[114] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

That  evening,  when  he  returned,  the  smile  was  still 
at  its  post;  but  it  dropped  away  wearily  as  he  said,  with 
his  hands  on  her  shoulders:  "Don't  worry,  mother;  I 
don't  know  exactly  what's  happening,  but  we're  not 
blacklisted  yet." 

Mrs.  Amherst  had  immediately  taken  up  her  work, 
letting  her  nervous  tension  find  its  usual  escape  through 
her  finger-tips.  Her  needles  flagged  as  she  lifted  her 
eyes  to  his. 

"  Something  is  happening,  then  ?  "  she  murmured. 

"  Oh,  a  number  of  things,  evidently — but  though  I'm 
in  the  heart  of  them,  I  can't  yet  make  out  how  they 
are  going  to  affect  me." 

His  mother's  glance  twinkled  in  time  with  the  flash 
of  her  needles.  "There's  always  a  safe  place  in  the 
heart  of  a  storm,"  she  said  shrewdly;  and  Amherst  re- 
joined with  a  laugh:  "Well,  if  it's  Truscomb's  heart, 
I  don't  know  that  it's  particularly  safe  for  me." 

"Tell  me  just  what  he  said,  John,"  she  begged, 
making  no  attempt  to  carry  the  pleasantry  farther, 
though  its  possibilities  still  seemed  to  flicker  about  her 
lip;  and  Amherst  proceeded  to  recount  his  talk  with 
the  manager. 

Truscomb,  it  appeared,  had  made  no  allusion  to 
Dillon;  his  avowed  purpose  in  summoning  his  assist- 
ant had  been  to  discuss  with  the  latter  the  question  of 
the  proposed  nursery  and  schools.  Mrs.  Westmore,  at 
[115] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Amherst's  suggestion,  had  .presented  these  projects  as 
her  own;  but  the  question  of  a  site  having  come  up, 
she  had  mentioned  to  Truscomb  his  assistant's  pro- 
posal that  the  company  should  buy  for  the  purpose 
the  notorious  Eldorado.  The  road-house  in  question 
had  always  been  one  of  the  most  destructive  influences 
in  the  mill-colony,  and  Amherst  had  made  one  or  two 
indirect  attempts  to  have  the  building  converted  to 
other  uses;  but  the  persistent  opposition  he  encoun- 
tered gave  colour  to  the  popular  report  that  the  mana- 
ger took  a  high  toll  from  the  landlord. 

It  therefore  at  once  occurred  to  Amherst  to  suggest 
the  purchase  of  the  property  to  Mrs.  Westmore;  and 
he  was  not  surprised  to  find  that  Truscomb's  opposi- 
tion to  the  scheme  centred  in  the  choice  of  the  building. 
But  even  at  this  point  the  manager  betrayed  no  open 
resistance;  he  seemed  tacitly  to  admit  Amherst's  right 
to  discuss  the  proposed  plans,  and  even  to  be  consulted 
concerning  the  choice  of  a  site.  He  was  ready  with  a 
dozen  good  reasons  against  the  purchase  of  the  road- 
house;  but  here  also  he  proceeded  with  a  discretion 
unexampled  in  his  dealings  with  his  subordinates.  He 
acknowledged  the  harm  done  by  the  dance-hall,  but 
objected  that  he  could  not  conscientiously  advise  the 
company  to  pay  the  extortionate  price  at  which  it  was 
held,  and  reminded  Amherst  that,  if  that  particular 
source  of  offense  were  removed,  others  would  inevitably 
C  116] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

spring  up  to  replace  it;  marshalling  the  usual  tem- 
porizing arguments  of  tolerance  and  expediency,  with 
no  marked  change  from  his  usual  tone,  till,  just  as  the 
interview  was  ending,  he  asked,  with  a  sudden  drop 
to  conciliation,  if  the  assistant  manager  had  anything 
to  complain  of  in  the  treatment  he  received. 

This  came  as  such  a  surprise  to  Amherst  that  before 
he  had  collected  himself  he  found  Truscomb  ambigu- 
ously but  unmistakably  offering  him — with  the  prac- 
tised indirection  of  the  man  accustomed  to  cover  his 
share  in  such  transactions — a  substantial  "considera- 
tion" for  dropping  the  matter  of  the  road-house.  It 
was  incredible,  yet  it  had  really  happened:  the  all- 
powerful  Truscomb,  who  held  Westmore  in  the  hollow 
of  his  hand,  had  stooped  to  bribing  his  assistant  be- 
cause he  was  afraid  to  deal  with  him  in  a  more  sum- 
mary manner.  Amherst's  leap  of  anger  at  the  offer 
was  curbed  by  the  instant  perception  of  its  cause.  He 
had  no  time  to  search  for  a  reason;  he  could  only  rally 
himself  to  meet  the  unintelligible  with  a  composure  as 
abysmal  as  Truscomb 's;  and  his  voice  still  rang  with 
the  wonder  of  the  incident  as  he  retailed  it  to  his 
mother. 

"Think  of  what  it  means,  mother,  for  a  young  woman 

like  Mrs.  Westmore,  without  any  experience  or  any 

habit  of  authority,  to  come  here,  and  at  the  first  glimpse 

of  injustice,  to  be  so  revolted  that  she  finds  the  courage 

[  117] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

and  cleverness  to  put  her  little  hand  to  the  machine  and 
reverse  the  engines — for  it's  nothing  less  that  she's 
done!  Oh,  I  know  there'll  be  a  reaction — the  pendu- 
lum's sure  to  swing  back:  but  you'll  see  it  won't  swing 
as  far.  Of  course  I  shall  go  in  the  end — but  Truscomb 
may  go  too :  Jove,  if  I  could  pull  him  down  on  me,  like 
what's-his-name  and  the  pillars  of  the  temple!" 

He  had  risen  and  was  measuring  the  little  sitting- 
room  with  his  long  strides,  his  head  flung  back  and  his 
eyes  dark  with  the  inward  look  his  mother  had  not 
always  cared  to  see  there.  But  now  her  own  glance 
seemed  to  have  caught  a  ray  from  his,  and  the  knitting 
flowed  from  her  hands  like  the  thread  of  fate,  as  she 
sat  silent,  letting  him  exhale  his  hopes  and  his  wonder, 
and  murmuring  only,  when  he  dropped  again  to  the 
chair  at  her  side:  "You  won't  go,  Johnny — you  won't 
go-" 

Mrs.  Westmore  lingered  on  for  over  two  weeks,  and 
during  that  time  Amherst  was  able,  in  various  direc- 
tions, to  develop  her  interest  in  the  mill-workers.  His 
own  schemes  involved  a  complete  readjustment  of  the 
relation  between  the  company  and  the  hands :  the  sup- 
pression of  the  obsolete  company  "store"  and  tene- 
ments, which  had  so  long  sapped  the  thrift  and  ambi- 
tion of  the  workers;  the  transformation  of  the  Hope- 
wood  grounds  into  a  park  and  athletic  field,  and  the 
[118] 


division  of  its  remaining  acres  into  building  lots  for  the 
mill-hands;  the  establishing  of  a  library,  a  dispensary 
and  emergency  hospital,  and  various  other  centres  of 
humanizing  influence;  but  he  refrained  from  letting  her 
see  that  his  present  suggestion  was  only  a  part  of  this 
larger  plan,  lest  her  growing  sympathy  should  be 
checked.  He  had  in  his  mother  an  example  of  the 
mind  accessible  only  to  concrete  impressions:  the  mind 
which  could  die  for  the  particular  instance,  yet  remain 
serenely  indifferent  to  its  causes.  To  Mrs.  Amherst, 
her  son's  work  had  been  interesting  simply  because  it 
was  his  work:  remove  his  presence  from  Westmore, 
and  the  whole  industrial  problem  became  to  her  as  non- 
existent as  star-dust  to  the  naked  eye.  And  in  Bessy 
Westmore  he  divined  a  nature  of  the  same  quality — 
divined,  but  no  longer  criticized  it.  Was  not  that  con- 
centration on  the  personal  issue  just  the  compensating 
grace  of  her  sex  ?  Did  it  not  offer  a  warm  tint  of  hu- 
man inconsistency  to  eyes  chilled  by  contemplating  life 
in  the  mass?  It  pleased  Amherst  for  the  moment  to 
class  himself  with  the  impersonal  student  of  social  prob- 
lems, though  in  truth  his  interest  in  them  had  its  source 
in  an  imagination  as  open  as  Bessy's  to  the  pathos  of 
the  personal  appeal.  But  if  he  had  the  same  sensitive- 
ness, how  inferior  were  his  means  of  expressing  it! 
Again  and  again,  during  their  talks,  he  had  the  feeling 
which  had  come  to  him  when  she  bent  over  Dillon's 
[  119] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

bed — that  her  exquisite  lines  were,  in  some  mystical 
sense,  the  visible  flowering  of  her  nature,  that  they  had 
taken  shape  in  response  to  the  inward  motions  of  the 
heart. 

To  a  young  man  ruled  by  high  enthusiasms  there 
can  be  no  more  dazzling  adventure  than  to  work  this 
miracle  in  the  tender  creature  who  yields  her  mind  to 
his — to  see,  as  it  were,  the  blossoming  of  the  spiritual 
seed  in  forms  of  heightened  loveliness,  the  bluer  beam 
of  the  eye,  the  richer  curve  of  the  lip,  all  the  physical 
currents  of  life  quickening  under  the  breath  of  a  kindled 
thought.  It  did  not  occur  to  him  that  any  other  emo- 
tion had  effected  the  change  he  perceived.  Bessy  West- 
more  had  in  full  measure  that  gift  of  unconscious  hypoc- 
risy which  enables  a  woman  to  make  the  man  in  whom 
she  is  interested  believe  that  she  enters  into  all  his 
thoughts.  She  had — more  than  this — the  gift  of  self- 
deception,  supreme  happiness  of  the  unreflecting  nat- 
ure, whereby  she  was  able  to  believe  herself  solely  en- 
grossed in  the  subjects  they  discussed,  to  regard  him  as 
the  mere  spokesman  of  important  ideas,  thus  saving 
their  intercourse  from  present  constraint,  and  from  the 
awkward  contemplation  of  future  contingencies.  So, 
in  obedience  to  the  ancient  sorcery  of  life,  these  two 
groped  for  and  found  each  other  in  regions  seemingly 
so  remote  from  the  accredited  domain  of  romance  that 
it  would  have  been  as  a  great  surprise  to  them  to  learn 
[  120] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

whither  they  had  strayed  as  to  see  the  arid  streets  of 
Westmore  suddenly  bursting  into  leaf. 

With  Mrs.  Westmore's  departure  Amherst,  for  the 
first  time,  became  aware  of  a  certain  flatness  in  his  life. 
His  daily  task  seemed  dull  and  purposeless,  and  he  was 
galled  by  Truscomb's  studied  forbearance,  under  which 
he  suspected  a  quickly  accumulating  store  of  animosity. 
He  almost  longed  for  some  collision  which  would  re- 
lease the  manager's  pent-up  resentment;  yet  he  dreaded 
increasingly  any  accident  that  might  make  his  stay  at 
Westmore  impossible. 

It  was  on  Sundays,  when  he  was  freed  from  his 
weekly  task,  that  he  was  most  at  the  mercy  of  these 
opposing  feelings.  They  drove  him  forth  on  long  soli- 
tary walks  beyond  the  town,  walks  ending  most  often 
in  the  deserted  grounds  of  Hopewood,  beautiful  now  in 
the  ruined  gold  of  October.  As  he  sat  under  the  beech- 
limbs  above  the  river,  watching  its  brown  current  sweep 
the  willow-roots  of  the  banks,  he  thought  how  this 
same  current,  within  its  next  short  reach,  passed  from 
wooded  seclusion  to  the  noise  and  pollution  of  the  mills. 
So  his  own  life  seemed  to  have  passed  once  more  from 
the  tranced  flow  of  the  last  weeks  into  its  old  channel  of 
unillumined  labour.  But  other  thoughts  came  to  him 
too:  the  vision  of  converting  that  melancholy  pleasure- 
ground  into  an  outlet  for  the  cramped  lives  of  the  mill- 
workers;  and  he  pictured  the  weed-grown  lawns  and 
[  121  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

paths  thronged  with  holiday-makers,  and  the  slopes 
nearer  the  factories  dotted  with  houses  and  gardens. 

An  unexpected  event  revived  these  hopes.  A  few 
days  before  Christmas  it  became  known  to  Hanaford 
that  Mrs.  Westmore  would  return  for  the  holidays. 
Cicely  was  drooping  in  town  air,  and  Bessy  had  per- 
suaded Mr.  Langhope  that  the  bracing  cold  of  Hana- 
ford would  be  better  for  the  child  than  the  milder  atmos- 
phere of  Long  Island.  They  reappeared,  and  brought 
with  them  a  breath  of  holiday  cheerfulness  such  as  West- 
more  had  never  known.  It  had  always  been  the  rule 
at  the  mills  to  let  the  operatives  take  their  pleasure  as 
they  saw  fit,  and  the  Eldorado  and  the  Hanaford  saloons 
throve  on  this  policy.  But  Mrs.  Westmore  arrived  full 
of  festal  projects.  There  was  to  be  a  giant  Christmas 
tree  for  the  mill-children,  a  supper  on  the  same  scale 
for  the  operatives,  and  a  bout  of  skating  and  coasting 
at  Hopewood  for  the  older  lads — the  "  band  "  and  "  bob- 
bin" boys  in  whom  Amherst  had  always  felt  a  special 
interest.  The  Gaines  ladies,  resolved  to  show  them- 
selves at  home  in  the  latest  philanthropic  fashions,  ac- 
tively seconded  Bessy's  endeavours,  and  for  a  week 
Westmore  basked  under  a  sudden  heat-wave  of  benefi- 
cence. 

The  time  had  passed  when  Amherst  might  have  made 
light  of  such  efforts.  With  Bessy  Westmore  smiling  up, 
holly-laden,  from  the  foot  of  the  ladder  on  which  she 
[  122] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

kept  him  perched,  how  could  he  question  the  efficacy 
of  hanging  the  opening-room  with  Christmas  wreaths, 
or  the  ultimate  benefit  of  gorging  the  operatives  with 
turkey  and  sheathing  their  offspring  in  red  mittens? 
It  was  just  like  the  end  of  a  story-book  with  a  pretty 
moral,  and  Amherst  was  in  the  mood  to  be  as  much 
taken  by  the  tinsel  as  the  youngest  mill-baby  held  up  to 
gape  at  the  tree. 

At  the  New  Year,  when  Mrs.  Westmore  left,  the  nego- 
tiations for  the  purchase  of  the  Eldorado  were  well 
advanced,  and  it  was  understood  that  on  their  comple- 
tion she  was  to  return  for  the  opening  of  the  night- 
school  and  nursery.  Suddenly,  however,  it  became 
known  that  the  proprietor  of  the  road-house  had  de- 
cided not  to  sell.  Amherst  heard  of  the  decision  from 
Duplain,  and  at  once  foresaw  the  inevitable  result — 
that  Mrs.  Westmore's  plan  would  be  given  up  owing 
to  the  difficulty  of  finding  another  site.  Mr.  Gaines 
and  Truscomb  had  both  discountenanced  the  erection 
of  a  special  building  for  what  was,  after  all,  only  a 
tentative  enterprise.  Among  the  purchasable  houses 
in  Westmore  no  other  was  suited  to  the  purpose,  and 
they  had,  therefore,  a  good  excuse  for  advising  Bessy 
to  defer  her  experiment. 

Almost  at  the  same  time,  however,  another  piece  of 
news  changed  the  aspect  of  affairs.  A  scandalous  oc- 
currence at  the  Eldorado,  witnesses  to  which  were  un- 
t  123] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

expectedly  forthcoming,  put  it  in  Amherst's  power  to 
threaten  the  landlord  with  exposure  unless  he  should 
at  once  accept  the  company's  offer  and  withdraw  from 
Westmore.  Amherst  had  no  long  time  to  consider  the 
best  means  of  putting  this  threat  into  effect.  He  knew 
it  was  not  only  idle  to  appeal  to  Truscomb,  but  essen- 
tial to  keep  the  facts  from  him  till  the  deed  was  done; 
yet  how  obtain  the  authority  to  act  without  him  ?  The 
seemingly  insuperable  difficulties  of  the  situation  whet- 
ted Amherst's  craving  for  a  struggle.  He  thought  first 
of  writing  to  Mrs.  Westmore;  but  now  that  the  spell  of 
her  presence  was  withdrawn  he  felt  how  hard  it  would 
be  to  make  her  understand  the  need  of  prompt  and 
secret  action;  and  besides,  was  it  likely  that,  at  such 
short  notice,  she  could  command  the  needful  funds? 
Prudence  opposed  the  attempt,  and  on  reflection  he 
decided  to  appeal  to  Mr.  Gaines,  hoping  that  the  fla- 
grancy  of  the  case  would  rouse  the  President  from  his 
usual  attitude  of  indifference. 

Mr.  Gaines  was  roused  to  the  extent  of  showing  a 
profound  resentment  against  the  cause  of  his  disturb- 
ance. He  relieved  his  sense  of  responsibility  by  some 
didactic  remarks  on  the  vicious  tendencies  of  the  work- 
ing-classes, and  concluded  with  the  reflection  that  the 
more  you  did  for  them  the  less  thanks  you  got.  But 
when  Amherst  showed  an  unwillingness  to  let  the  mat- 
ter rest  on  this  time-honoured  aphorism,  the  President 
[  124] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

retrenched  himself  behind  ambiguities,  suggestions  that 
they  should  await  Mrs.  Westmore's  return,  and  general 
considerations  of  a  pessimistic  nature,  tapering  off  into 
a  gloomy  view  of  the  weather. 

"By  God,  I'll  write  to  her!"  Amherst  exclaimed,  as 
the  Gaines  portals  closed  on  him;  and  all  the  way  back 
to  Westmore  he  was  busy  marshalling  his  arguments 
and  entreaties. 

He  wrote  the  letter  that  night,  but  did  not  post  it. 
Some  unavowed  distrust  of  her  restrained  him — a  dis- 
trust not  of  her  heart  but  of  her  intelligence.  He  felt 
that  the  whole  future  of  Westmore  was  at  stake,  and 
decided  to  await  the  development  of  the  next  twenty- 
four  hours.  The  letter  was  still  in  his  pocket  when,  after 
dinner,  he  was  summoned  to  the  office  by  Truscomb. 

That  evening,  when  he  returned  home,  he  entered 
the  little  sitting-room  without  speaking.  His  mother 
sat  there  alone,  in  her  usual  place — how  many  nights 
he  had  seen  the  lamplight  slant  at  that  particular  angle 
across  her  fresh  cheek  and  the  fine  wrinkles  about  her 
eyes!  He  was  going  to  add  another  wrinkle  to  the 
number  now — soon  they  would  creep  down  and  en- 
croach upon  the  smoothness  of  the  cheek. 

She  looked  up  and  saw  that  his  glance  was  turned  to 
the  crowded  bookshelves  behind  her. 

"There  must  be  nearly  a  thousand  of  them,"  he  said 
as  their  eyes  met. 

[  125] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Books?  Yes — with  your  father's.  Why — were  you 
thinking.  .  .  ?"  She  started  up  suddenly  and  crossed 
over  to  him. 

"Too  many  for  wanderers,"  he  continued,  drawing 
her  hands  to  his  breast;  then,  as  she  clung  to  him, 
weeping  and  trembling  a  little:  "It  had  to  be,  mother," 
he  said,  kissing  her  penitently  where  the  fine  wrinkles 
died  into  the  cheek. 

VIII 

AMHERST'S  dismissal  was  not  to  take  effect  for  a 
J.  \~  month;  and  in  the  interval  he  addressed  himself 
steadily  to  his  task. 

He  went  through  the  routine  of  the  work  numbly; 
but  his  intercourse  with  the  hands  tugged  at  deep  fibres 
of  feelings.  He  had  always  shared,  as  far  as  his  duties 
allowed,  in  the  cares  and  interests  of  their  few  free 
hours:  the  hours  when  the  automatic  appendages  of 
the  giant  machine  became  men  and  women  again,  with 
desires  and  passions  of  their  own.  Under  Amherst's 
influence  the  mixed  elements  of  the  mill-community  had 
begun  to  crystallize  into  social  groups:  his  books  had 
served  as  an  improvised  lending-library,  he  had  organ- 
ized a  club,  a  rudimentary  orchestra,  and  various  other 
means  of  binding  together  the  better  spirits  of  the  com- 
munity. With  the  older  men,  the  attractions  of  the 

[  126] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Eldorado,  and  kindred  inducements,  often  worked 
against  him;  but  among  the  younger  hands,  and  es- 
pecially the  boys,  he  had  gained  a  personal  ascendency 
that  it  was  bitter  to  relinquish. 

It  was  the  severing  of  this  tie  that  cost  him  most  pain 
in  the  final  days  at  Westmore;  and  after  he  had  done 
what  he  could  to  console  his  mother,  and  to  put  himself 
in  the  way  of  getting  work  elsewhere,  he  tried  to  see 
what  might  be  saved  out  of  the  ruins  of  the  little  polity 
he  had  built  up.  He  hoped  his  influence  might  at 
least  persist  in  the  form  of  an  awakened  instinct  of 
fellowship ;  and  he  gave  every  spare  hour  to  strengthen- 
ing the  links  he  had  tried  to  form.  The  boys,  at  any 
rate,  would  be  honestly  sorry  to  have  him  go:  not,  in- 
deed, from  the  profounder  reasons  that  affected  him, 
but  because  he  had  not  only  stood  persistently  between 
the  overseers  and  themselves,  but  had  recognized  their 
right  to  fun  after  work-hours  as  well  as  their  right  to 
protection  while  they  worked. 

In  the  glow  of  Mrs.  Westmore's  Christmas  visitation 
an  athletic  club  had  been  formed,  and  leave  obtained 
to  use  the  Hopewood  grounds  for  Saturday  afternoon 
sports;  and  thither  Amherst  continued  to  conduct  the 
boys  after  the  mills  closed  at  the  week-end.  His  last 
Saturday  had  now  come:  a  shining  afternoon  of  late 
February,  with  a  red  sunset  bending  above  frozen  river 
and  slopes  of  unruffled  snow.  For  an  hour  or  more  he 
[  127  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

had  led  the  usual  sports,  coasting  down  the  steep  de- 
scent from  the  house  to  the  edge  of  the  woods,  and 
skating  and  playing  hockey  on  the  rough  river-ice  which 
eager  hands  kept  clear  after  every  snow-storm.  He 
always  felt  the  contagion  of  these  sports:  the  glow  of 
movement,  the  tumult  of  young  voices,  the  sting  of  the 
winter  air,  roused  all  the  boyhood  in  his  blood.  But 
today  he  had  to  force  himself  through  his  part  in  the 
performance.  To  the  very  last,  as  he  now  saw,  he  had 
hoped  for  a  sign  in  the  heavens:  not  the  reversal  of 
his  own  sentence — for,  merely  on  disciplinary  grounds, 
he  perceived  that  to  be  impossible — but  something 
pointing  to  a  change  in  the  management  of  the  mills, 
some  proof  that  Mrs.  Westmore's  intervention  had  be- 
tokened more  than  a  passing  impulse  of  compassion. 
Surely  she  would  not  accept  without  question  the  aban- 
donment of  her  favourite  scheme;  and  if  she  came 
back  to  put  the  question,  the  answer  would  lay  bare 
the  whole  situation.  .  .  So  Amherst's  hopes  had  per- 
suaded him;  but  the  day  before  he  had  heard  that  she 
was  to  sail  for  Europe.  The  report,  first  announced 
in  the  papers,  had  been  confirmed  by  his  mother,  who 
brought  back  from  a  visit  to  Hanaford  the  news  that 
Mrs.  Westmore  was  leaving  at  once  for  an  indefinite 
period,  and  that  the  Hanaford  house  was  to  be  closed. 
Irony  would  have  been  the  readiest  caustic  for  the 
wound  inflicted;  but  Amherst,  for  that  very  reason,  dis- 
[128] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

dained  it.  He  would  not  taint  his  disappointment  with 
mockery,  but  would  leave  it  among  the  unspoiled  sad- 
nesses of  life.  .  . 

He  flung  himself  into  the  boys'  sports  with  his 
usual  energy,  meaning  that  their  last  Saturday  with 
him  should  be  their  merriest;  but  he  went  through  his 
part  mechanically,  and  was  glad  when  the  sun  began 
to  dip  toward  the  rim  of  the  woods. 

He  was  standing  on  the  ice,  where  the  river  widened 
just  below  the  house,  when  a  jingle  of  bells  broke  on 
the  still  air,  and  he  saw  a  sleigh  driven  rapidly  up  the 
avenue.  Amherst  watched  it  in  surprise.  Who,  at 
that  hour,  could  be  invading  the  winter  solitude  of 
Hopewood?  The  sleigh  halted  near  the  closed  house, 
and  a  muffled  figure,  alighting  alone,  began  to  move 
down  the  snowy  slope  toward  the  skaters. 

In  an  instant  he  had  torn  off  his  skates  and  was  bound- 
ing up  the  bank.  He  would  have  known  the  figure  any- 
where— known  that  lovely  poise  of  the  head,  the  mixture 
of  hesitancy  and  quickness  in  the  light  tread  which  even 
the  snow  could  not  impede.  Half-way  up  the  slope  to  the 
house  they  met,  and  Mrs.  Westmore  held  out  her  hand. 
Face  and  lips,  as  she  stood  above  him,  glowed  with  her 
swift  passage  through  the  evening  air,  and  in  the  blaze 
of  the  sunset  she  seemed  saturated  with  heavenly  fires. 

"I  drove  out  to  find  you — they  told  me  you  were 
here — I  arrived  this  morning,  quite  suddenly.  .  ." 
[  129  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

She  broke  off,  as  though  the  encounter  had  checked 
her  ardour  instead  of  kindling  it;  but  he  drew  no  dis- 
couragement from  her  tone. 

"I  hoped  you  would  come  before  I  left — I  knew  you 
would!"  he  exclaimed;  and  at  his  last  words  her  face 
clouded  anxiously. 

"I  didn't  know  you  were  leaving  Westmore  till  yes- 
terday— the  day  before — I  got  a  letter.  .  ."  Again  she 
wavered,  perceptibly  trusting  her  difficulty  to  him,  in 
the  sweet  way  he  had  been  trying  to  forget;  and  he 
answered  with  recovered  energy:  "The  great  thing  is 
that  you  should  be  here." 

She  shook  her  head  at  his  optimism.  "What  can  I 
do  if  you  go?" 

"You  can  give  me  a  chance,  before  I  go,  to  tell  you 
a  little  about  some  of  the  loose  ends  I  am  leaving." 

"But  why  are  you  leaving  them?  I  don't  under- 
stand. Is  it  inevitable?" 

"Inevitable,"  he  returned,  with  an  odd  glow  of  satis- 
faction in  the  word;  and  as  her  eyes  besought  him,  he 
added,  smiling:  "I've  been  dismissed,  you  see;  and 
from  the  manager's  standpoint  I  think  I  deserved  it. 
But  the  best  part  of  my  work  needn't  go  with  me — and 
that  is  what  I  should  like  to  speak  to  you  about.  As 
assistant  manager  I  can  easily  be  replaced — have 
been,  I  understand,  already;  but  among  these  boys 
here  I  should  like  to  think  that  a  little  of  me  stayed 
[  130  ] 


Half-way  up  the  slope  to  the  house  they  met 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

— and  it  will,  if  you'll  let  me  tell  you  what  I've  been 
doing." 

She  glanced  away  from  him  at  the  busy  throng  on 
the  ice  and  at  th*e  other  black  cluster  above  the  coasting- 
slide. 

"How  they're  enjoying  it!"  she  murmured.  "What 
a  pity  it  was  never  done  before!  And  who  will  keep  it 
up  when  you're  gone?" 

"You,"  he  answered,  meeting  her  eyes  again;  and 
as  she  coloured  a  little  under  his  look  he  went  on 
quickly :  "  Will  you  come  over  and  look  at  the  coasting  ? 
The  time  is  almost  up.  One  more  slide  and  they'll  be 
packing  off  to  supper." 

She  nodded  "yes,"  and  they  walked  in  silence  over 
the  white  lawn,  criss-crossed  with  tramplings  of  happy 
feet,  to  the  ridge  from  which  the  coasters  started  on 
their  run.  Amherst's  object  in  turning  the  talk  had 
been  to  gain  a  moment's  respite.  He  could  not  bear 
to  waste  his  perfect  hour  in  futile  explanations:  he 
wanted  to  keep  it  undisturbed  by  any  thought  of  the 
future.  And  the  same  feeling  seemed  to  possess  his 
companion,  for  she  did  not  speak  again  till  they  reached 
the  knoll  where  the  boys  were  gathered. 

A  sled  packed  with  them  hung  on  the  brink:  with  a 

last  shout  it  was  off,  dipping  down  the  incline  with  the 

long  curved  flight  of  a  swallow,  flashing  across  the  wide 

meadow  at  the  base  of  the  hill,  and  tossed  upward  again 

[131] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

by  its  own  impetus,  till  it  vanished  in  the  dark  rim  of 
wood  on  the  opposite  height.  The  lads  waiting  on  the 
knoll  sang  out  for  joy,  and  Bessy  clapped  her  hands 
and  joined  with  them. 

"What  fun!  I  wish  I'd  brought  Cicely!  I've  not 
coasted  for  years,"  she  laughed  out,  as  the  second  de- 
tachment of  boys  heaped  themselves  on  another  sled 
and  shot  down.  Amherst  looked  at  her  with  a  smile. 
He  saw  that  every  other  feeling  had  vanished  in  the 
exhilaration  of  watching  the  flight  of  the  sleds.  She 
had  forgotten  why  she  had  come — forgotten  her  dis- 
tress at  his  dismissal — forgotten  everything  but  the 
spell  of  the  long  white  slope,  and  the  tingle  of  cold 
in  her  veins. 

"  Shall  we  go  down  ?  Should  you  like  it  ?  "  he  asked, 
feeling  no  resentment  under  the  heightened  glow  of  his 
pulses. 

"Oh,  do  take  me — I  shall  love  it!"  Her  eyes  shone 
like  a  child's — she  might  have  been  a  lovelier  embodi- 
ment of  the  shouting  boyhood  about  them. 

The  first  band  of  coasters,  sled  at  heels,  had  by  this 
time  already  covered  a  third  of  the  homeward  stretch; 
but  Amherst  was  too  impatient  to  wait.  Plunging 
down  to  the  meadow  he  caught  up  the  sled-rope,  and 
raced  back  with  the  pack  of  rejoicing  youth  in  his  wake. 
The  sharp  climb  up  the  hill  seemed  to  fill  his  lungs 
with  flame:  his  whole  body  burned  with  a  strange  in- 
[  132  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

tensity  of  life.  As  he  reached  the  top,  a  distant  bell 
rang  across  the  fields  from  Westmore,  and  the  boys 
began  to  snatch  up  their  coats  and  mufflers. 

"  Be  off  with  you — I'll  look  after  the  sleds,"  Amherst 
called  to  them  as  they  dispersed;  then  he  turned  for  a 
moment  to  see  that  the  skaters  below  were  also  heeding 
the  summons. 

A  cold  pallor  lay  on  the  river-banks  and  on  the  low 
meadow  beneath  the  knoll;  but  the  woodland  opposite 
stood  black  against  scarlet  vapours  that  ravelled  off  in 
sheer  light  toward  a  sky  hung  with  an  icy  moon. 

Amherst  drew  up  the  sled  and  held  it  steady  while 
Bessy,  seating  herself,  tucked  her  furs  close  with  little 
breaks  of  laughter;  then  he  placed  himself  in  front. 

"Ready?"  he  cried  over  his  shoulder,  and  "Ready!" 
she  called  back. 

Their  craft  quivered  under  them,  hanging  an  instant 
over  the  long  stretch  of  whiteness  below;  the  level 
sun  dazzled  their  eyes,  and  the  first  plunge  seemed  to 
dash  them  down  into  darkness.  Amherst  heard  a  cry 
of  glee  behind  him;  then  all  sounds  were  lost  in  the 
whistle  of  air  humming  by  like  the  flight  of  a  million 
arrows.  They  had  dropped  below  the  sunset  and  were 
tearing  through  the  clear  nether  twilight  of  the  descent; 
then,  with  a  bound,  the  sled  met  the  level,  and  shot 
away  across  the  meadow  toward  the  opposite  height. 
It  seemed  to  Amherst  as  though  his  body  had  been 
[  133] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

left  behind,  and  only  the  spirit  in  him  rode  the  wild 
blue  currents  of  galloping  air;  but  as  the  sled's  rush 
began  to  slacken  with  the  strain  of  the  last  ascent  he 
was  recalled  to  himself  by  the  touch  of  the  breathing 
warmth  at  his  back.  Bessy  had  put  out  a  hand  to 
steady  herself,  and  as  she  leaned  forward,  gripping  his 
arm,  a  flying  end  of  her  furs  swept  his  face.  There  was 
a  delicious  pang  in  being  thus  caught  back  to  life;  and 
as  the  sled  stopped,  and  he  sprang  to  his  feet,  he  still 
glowed  with  the  sensation.  Bessy  too  was  under  the 
spell.  In  the  dusk  of  the  beech-grove  where  they  had 
landed,  he  could  barely  distinguish  her  features;  but 
her  eyes  shone  on  him,  and  he  heard  her  quick  breath- 
ing as  he  stooped  to  help  her  to  her  feet. 

"Oh,  how  beautiful — it's  the  only  thing  better  than 
a  good  gallop!" 

She  leaned  against  a  tree-bole,  panting  a  little,  and 
loosening  her  furs. 

"What  a  pity  it's  too  dark  to  begin  again!"  she 
sighed,  looking  about  her  through  the  dim  weaving  of 
leafless  boughs. 

"It's  not  so  dark  in  the  open — we  might  have  one 
more,"  he  proposed;  but  she  shook  her  head,  seized 
by  a  new  whim. 

"It's  so  still  and  delicious  in  here — did  you  hear  the 
snow  fall  when  that  squirrel  jumped  across  to  the  pine  ?  " 
She  tilted  her  head,  narrowing  her  lids  as  she  peered 
[  134] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

upward.  "There  he  is!  One  gets  used  to  the  light.  .  . 
Look !  See  his  little  eyes  shining  down  at  us ! " 

As  Ainherst  looked  where  she  pointed,  the  squirrel 
leapt  to  another  tree,  and  they  stole  on  after  him  through 
the  hushed  wood,  guided  by  his  grey  flashes  in  the  dim- 
ness. Here  and  there,  in  a  break  of  the  snow,  they 
trod  on  a  bed  of  wet  leaves  that  gave  out  a  breath  of 
hidden  life,  or  a  hemlock  twig  dashed  its  spicy  scent 
into  their  faces.  As  they  grew  used  to  the  twilight 
their  eyes  began  to  distinguish  countless  delicate  gra- 
dations of  tint:  cold  mottlings  of  grey-black  boles 
against  the  snow,  wet  russets  of  drifted  beech-leaves,  a 
distant  network  of  mauve  twigs  melting  into  the  wood- 
land haze.  And  in  the  silence  just  such  fine  gradations 
of  sound  became  audible:  the  soft  drop  of  loosened 
snow-lumps,  a  stir  of  startled  wings,  the  creak  of  a 
dead  branch,  somewhere  far  off  in  darkness. 

They  walked  on,  still  in  silence,  as  though  they  had 
entered  the  glade  of  an  enchanted  forest  and  were 
powerless  to  turn  back  or  to  break  the  hush  with  a 
word.  They  made  no  pretense  of  following  the  squir- 
rel any  longer;  he  had  flashed  away  to  a  high  tree-top, 
from  which  his  ironical  chatter  pattered  down  on  their 
unheeding  ears.  Amherst's  sensations  were  not  of  that 
highest  order  of  happiness  where  mind  and  heart  mingle 
their  elements  in  the  strong  draught  of  life:  it  was  a 
languid  fume  that  stole  through  him  from  the  cup  at 
[  135  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

his  lips.  But  after  the  sense  of  defeat  and  failure 
which  the  last  weeks  had  brought,  the  reaction  was  too 
exquisite  to  be  analyzed.  All  he  asked  of  the  moment 
was  its  immediate  sweetness.  .  . 

They  had  reached  the  brink  of  a  rocky  glen  where  a 
little  brook  still  sent  its  thread  of  sound  through  muf- 
flings  of  ice  and  huddled  branches.  Bessy  stood  still  a 
moment, bending  her  head  to  the  sweet  cold  tinkle;  then 
she  moved  away  and  said  slowly:  "We  must  go  back." 

As  they  turned  to  retrace  their  steps  a  yellow  line  of 
light  through  the  tree-trunks  showed  them  that  they 
had  not,  after  all,  gone  very  deep  into  the  wood.  A  few 
minutes'  walk  would  restore  them  to  the  lingering  day- 
light, and  on  the  farther  side  of  the  meadow  stood  the 
sleigh  which  was  to  carry  Bessy  back  to  Hanaford.  A 
sudden  sense  of  the  evanescence  of  the  moment  roused 
Amherst  from  his  absorption.  Before  the  next  change 
in  the  fading  light  he  would  be  back  again  among  the 
ugly  realities  of  life.  Did  she,  too,  hate  to  return  to 
them  ?  Or  why  else  did  she  walk  so  slowly — why  did 
she  seem  as  much  afraid  as  himself  to  break  the  silence 
that  held  them  in  its  magic  circle  ? 

A  dead  pine-branch  caught  in  the  edge  of  her  skirt, 
and  she  stood  still  while  Amherst  bent  down  to  release 
her.  As  she  turned  to  help  him  he  looked  up  with  a 
smile. 

"The  wood  doesn't  want  to  let  you  go,"  he  said. 
[  136] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

She  made  no  reply,  and  he  added,  rising:  "But  you'll 
come  back  to  it — you'll  come  back  often,  I  hope." 

He  could  not  see  her  face  in  the  dimness,  but  her 
voice  trembled  a  little  as  she  answered:  "I  will  do 
what  you  tell  me — but  I  shall  be  alone — against  all  the 
others:  they  don't  understand." 

The  simplicity,  the  helplessness,  of  the  avowal,  ap- 
pealed to  him  not  as  a  weakness  but  as  a  grace.  He 
understood  what  she  was  really  saying:  "How  can  you 
desert  me  ?  How  can  you  put  this  great  responsibility 
on  me,  and  then  leave  me  to  bear  it  alone  ?"  and  in  the 
light  of  her  unuttered  appeal  his  action  seemed  almost 
like  cruelty.  Why  had  he  opened  her  eyes  to  wrongs 
she  had  no  strength  to  redress  without  his  aid  ? 

He  could  only  answer,  as  he  walked  beside  her  toward 
the  edge  of  the  wood:  "You  will  not  be  alone — in  time 
you  will  make  the  others  understand;  in  time  they  will 
be  with  you." 

"Ah,  you  don't  believe  that!"  she  exclaimed,  pausing 
suddenly,  and  speaking  with  an  intensity  of  reproach 
that  amazed  him. 

"I  hope  it,  at  any  rate,"  he  rejoined,  pausing  also. 
"And  I'm  sure  that  if  you  will  come  here  oftener — if 
you'll  really  live  among  your  people " 

"  How  can  you  say  that,  when  you're  deserting  them  ?  " 
she  broke  in,  with  a  feminine  excess  of  inconsequence 
that  fairly  dashed  the  words  from  his  lips. 
[  137] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Deserting  them?     Don't  you  understand ?" 

"I  understand  that  you've  made  Mr.  Gaines  and 
Truscomb  angry — yes;  but  if  I  should  insist  on  your 
staying " 

Amherst  felt  the  blood  rush  to  his  forehead.  "No — 
no,  it's  not  possible!"  he  exclaimed,  with  a  vehemence 
addressed  more  to  himself  than  to  her. 

"Then  what  will  happen  at  the  mills?" 

"Oh,  some  one  else  will  be  found — the  new  ideas  are 
stirring  everywhere.  And  if  you'll  only  come  back  here, 
and  help  my  successor " 

"  Do  you  think  they  are  likely  to  choose  any  one  else 
with  your  ideas?"  she  interposed  with  unexpected 
acuteness;  and  after  a  short  silence  he  answered :  "  Not 
immediately,  perhaps;  but  in  time^in  time  there  will 
be  improvements." 

"As  if  the  poor  people  could  wait!  Oh,  it's  cruel, 
cruel  of  you  to  go ! " 

Her  voice  broke  in  a  throb  of  entreaty  that  went  to 
his  inmost  fibres. 

"You  don't  understand.  It's  impossible  in  the  pres- 
ent state  of  things  that  I  should  do  any  good  by  staying." 

"Then  you  refuse?  Even  if  I  were  to  insist  on 
their  asking  you  to  stay,  you  would  still  refuse?"  she 
persisted. 

"Yes— I  should  still  refuse." 

She  made  no  answer,  but  moved  a  few  steps  nearer 
[  138  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

to  the  edge  of  the  wood.  The  meadow  was  just  below 
them  now,  and  the  sleigh  in  plain  sight  on  the  height 
beyond.  Their  steps  made  no  sound  on  the  sodden 
drifts  underfoot,  and  in  the  silence  he  thought  he  heard 
a  catch  in  her  breathing.  It  was  enough  to  make  the 
brimming  moment  overflow.  He  stood  still  before  her 
and  bent  his  head  to  hers. 

"Bessy!"  he  said,  with  sudden  vehemence. 

She  did  not  speak  or  move,  but  in  the  quickened 
state  of  his  perceptions  he  became  aware  that  she  was 
silently  weeping.  The  gathering  darkness  under  the 
trees  enveloped  them.  It  absorbed  her  outline  into  the 
shadowy  background  of  the  wood,  from  which  her  face 
emerged  in  a  faint  spot  of  pallor;  and  the  same  ob- 
scurity seemed  to  envelop  his  faculties,  merging  the 
hard  facts  of  life  in  a  blur  of  feeling  in  which  the  dis- 
tinctest  impression  was  the  sweet  sense  of  her  tears. 

"Bessy!"  he  exclaimed  again;  and  as  he  drew  a  step 
nearer  he  felt  her  yield  to  him,  and  bury  her  sobs 
against  his  arm. 


[  139] 


BOOK  II 
IX 

"  "BUT,  Justine " 

JLJ  Mrs.  Harry  Dressel,  seated  in  the  June  freshness 
of  her  Oak  Street  drawing-room,  and  harmonizing  by 
her  high  lights  and  hard  edges  with  the  white-and- 
gold  angularities  of  the  best  furniture,  cast  a  rebuking 
eye  on  her  friend  Miss  Brent,  who  stood  arranging  in 
a  glass  bowl  the  handful  of  roses  she  had  just  brought 
in  from  the  garden. 

Mrs.  Dressel's  intonation  made  it  clear  that  the  en- 
trance of  Miss  Brent  had  been  the  signal  for  renewing 
an  argument  which  the  latter  had  perhaps  left  the 
room  to  escape. 

"When  you  were  here  three  years  ago,  Justine,  I 
could  understand  your  not  wanting  to  go  out,  because 
you  were  in  mourning  for  your  mother — and  besides, 
you'd  volunteered  for  that  bad  surgical  case  in  the  Hope 
Hospital.  But  now  that  you've  come  back  for  a  rest 
and  a  change  I  can't  imagine  why  you  persist  in  shut- 
ting yourself  up — unless,  of  course,"  she  concluded,  in 
a  higher  key  of  reproach,  "it's  because  you  think  so 
little  of  Hanaford  society — 

[  140] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Justine  Brent,  putting  the  last  rose  in  place,  turned 
from  her  task  with  a  protesting  gesture. 

"My  dear  Effie,  who  am  I  to  think  little  of  any  so- 
ciety, when  I  belong  to  none?"  She  passed  a  last 
light  touch  over  the  flowers,  and  crossing  the  room, 
brushed  her  friend's  hand  with  the  same  caressing 
gesture. 

Mrs.  Dressel  met  it  with  an  unrelenting  turn  of  her 
plump  shoulder,  murmuring:  "Oh,  if  you  take  that 
tone!"  And  on  Miss  Brent's  gaily  rejoining:  "Isn't 
it  better  than  to  have  other  people  take  it  for  me?" 
she  replied,  with  an  air  of  affront  that  expressed  itself 
in  a  ruffling  of  her  whole  pretty  person:  "If  you'll 
excuse  my  saying  so,  Justine,  the  fact  that  you  are  stay- 
ing with  me  would  be  enough  to  make  you  welcome 
anywhere  in  Hanaford!" 

"I'm  sure  of  it,  dear;  so  sure  that  my  horrid  pride 
rather  resents  being  floated  in  on  the  high  tide  of 
such  overwhelming  credentials." 

Mrs.  Dressel  glanced  up  doubtfully  at  the  dark  face 
laughing  down  on  her.  Though  she  was  president  of 
the  Maplewood  Avenue  Book-club,  and  habitually 
figured  in  the  society  column  of  the  "Banner"  as  one 
of  the  intellectual  leaders  of  Hanaford,  there  were  mo- 
ments when  her  self-confidence  trembled  before  Jus- 
tine's light  sallies.  It  was  absurd,  of  course,  given  the 
relative  situations  of  the  two;  and  Mrs.  Dressel,  behind 
[141  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

her  friend's  back,  was  quickly  reassured  by  the  thought 
that  Justine  was  only  a  hospital  nurse,  who  had  to 
work  for  her  living,  and  had  really  never  "been  any- 
where"; but  when  Miss  Brent's  verbal  arrows  were 
flying,  it  seemed  somehow  of  more  immediate  conse- 
quence that  she  was  fairly  well-connected,  and  lived  in 
New  York.  No  one  placed  a  higher  value  on  the  ab- 
stract qualities  of  wit  and  irony  than  Mrs.  Dressel;  the 
difficulty  was  that  she  never  quite  knew  when  Jus- 
tine's retorts  were  loaded,  or  when  her  own  suscep- 
tibilities were  the  target  aimed  at;  and  between  her  de- 
sire to  appear  to  take  the  joke,  and  the  fear  of  being 
ridiculed  without  knowing  it,  her  pretty  face  often  pre- 
sented an  interesting  study  in  perplexity.  As  usual, 
she  now  took  refuge  in  bringing  the  talk  back  to  a 
personal  issue. 

"I  can't  imagine,"  she  said,  "why  you  won't  go  to 
the  Gaines's  garden-party.  It's  always  the  most  bril- 
liant affair  of  the  season;  and  this  year,  with  the  John 
Amhersts  here,  and  all  their  party — that  fascinating 
Mrs.  Eustace  Ansell,  and  Mrs.  Amherst's  father,  old 
Mr.  Langhope,  who  is  quite  as  quick  and  clever  as  yau 
are — you  certainly  can't  accuse  us  of  being  dull  and 
provincial ! " 

Miss  Brent  smiled.  "As  far  as  I  can  remember, 
Effie,  it  is  always  you  who  accuse  others  of  bringing 
that  charge  against  Hanaford.  For  my  part,  I  know 
[  142] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

too  little  of  it  to  have  formed  any  opinion ;  but  whatever 
it  may  have  to  offer  me,  I  am  painfully  conscious  of 
having,  at  present,  nothing  but  your  kind  commenda- 
tion to  give  in  return." 

Mrs.  Dressel  rose  impatiently.  "How  absurdly  you 
talk!  You're  a  little  thinner  than  usual,  and  I  don't 
like  those  dark  lines  under  your  eyes ;  but  Westy  Gaines 
told  me  yesterday  that  he  thought  you  handsomer  than 
ever,  and  that  it  was  intensely  becoming  to  some  women 
to  look  over-tired." 

"It's  lucky  I'm  one  of  that  kind,"  Miss  Brent  re- 
joined, between  a  sigh  and  a  laugh,  "and  there's  every 
promise  of  my  getting  handsomer  every  day  if  some- 
body doesn't  soon  arrest  the  geometrical  progression  of 
my  good  looks  by  giving  me  the  chance  to  take  a  year's 
rest!" 

As  she  spoke,  she  stretched  her  arms  above  her  head, 
with  a  gesture  revealing  the  suppleness  of  her  slim 
young  frame,  but  also  its  tenuity  of  structure — the 
frailness  of  throat  and  shoulders,  and  the  play  of  bones 
in  the  delicate  neck.  Justine  Brent  had  one  of  those 
imponderable  bodies  that  seem  a  mere  pinch  of  matter 
shot  through  with  light  and  colour.  Though  she  did 
not  flush  easily,  auroral  lights  ran  under  her  clear  skin, 
were  lost  in  the  shadows  of  her  hair,  and  broke  again 
in  her  eyes;  and  her  voice  seemed  to  shoot  light  too, 
as  though  her  smile  flashed  back  from  her  words  as 
I  143] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

they  fell — all  her  features  being  so  fluid  and  changeful 
that  the  one  solid  thing  about  her  was  the  massing  of 
dense  black  hair  which  clasped  her  face  like  the  noble 
metal  of  some  antique  bust. 

Mrs.  Dressel's  face  softened  at  the  note  of  weariness 
in  the  girl's  voice.  "Are  you  very  tired,  dear?"  she 
asked  drawing  her  down  to  a  seat  on  the  sofa. 

"Yes,  and  no — not  so  much  bodily,  perhaps,  as  in 
spirit."  Justine  Brent  drew  her  brows  together,  and 
stared  moodily  at  the  thin  brown  hands  interwoven  be- 
tween Mrs.  Dressel's  plump  fingers.  Seated  thus,  with 
hollowed  shoulders  and  brooding  head,  she  might  have 
figured  a  young  sibyl  bowed  above  some  mystery  of 
fate;  but  the  next  moment  her  face,  inclining  toward 
her  friend's,  cast  off  its  shadows  and  resumed  the  look 
of  a  plaintive  child. 

"The  worst  of  it  is  that  I  don't  look  forward  with 
any  interest  to  taking  up  the  old  drudgery  again.  Of 
course  that  loss  of  interest  may  be  merely  physical — I 
should  call  it  so  in  a  nervous  patient,  no  doubt.  But 
in  myself  it  seems  different — it  seems  to  go  to  the  roots 
of  the  world.  You  know  it  was  always  the  imaginative 
side  of  my  work  that  helped  me  over  the  ugly  details — 
the  pity  and  beauty  that  disinfected  the  physical  horror; 
but  now  that  feeling  is  lost,  and  only  the  mortal  dis- 
gust remains.  Oh,  Effie,  I  don't  want  to  be  a  minis- 
tering angel  any  more — I  want  to  be  uncertain,  coy 
[  144  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

and  hard  to  please.  I  want  something  dazzling  and 
unaccountable  to  happen  to  me — something  new  and 
unlived  and  indescribable!" 

She  snatched  herself  with  a  laugh  from  the  bewildered 
Effie,  and  flinging  up  her  arms  again,  spun  on  a  light 
heel  across  the  polished  floor. 

"Well,  then,"  murmured  Mrs.  Dressel  with  gentle 
obstinacy,  "I  can't  see  why  in  the  world  you  won't  go 
to  the  Gaines's  garden-party!"  And  caught  in  the 
whirlwind  of  her  friend's  incomprehensible  mirth,  she 
still  persisted,  as  she  ducked  her  blonde  head  to  it:  "If 
you'll  only  let  me  lend  you  my  dress  with  the  Irish  lace, 
you'll  look  smarter  than  anybody  there.  .  ." 

Before  her  toilet  mirror,  an  hour  later,  Justine  Brent 
seemed  in  a  way  to  fulfill  Mrs.  Dressel's  prediction.  So 
mirror-like  herself,  she  could  no  more  help  reflecting 
the  happy  effect  of  a  bow  or  a  feather  than  the  subtler 
influence  of  word  and  look;  and  her  face  and  figure 
were  so  new  to  the  advantages  of  dress  that,  at  four- 
and-twenty,  she  still  produced  the  effect  of  a  young  girl 
in  her  first  "good"  frock.  In  Mrs.  Dressel's  festal 
raiment,  which  her  dark  tints  subdued  to  a  quiet  ele- 
gance, she  was  like  the  golden  core  of  a  pale  rose  illu- 
minating and  scenting  its  petals. 

Three  years  of  solitary  life,  following  on  a  youth  of 
confidential  intimacy  with  the  mother  she  had  lost,  had 
[  145  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

produced  in  her  the  quaint  habit  of  half-loud  soliloquy. 
"Fine  feathers,  Justine!"  she  laughed  back  at  her 
laughing  image.  "You  look  like  a  phoenix  risen  from 
your  ashes.  But  slip  back  into  your  own  plumage,  and 
you'll  be  no  more  than  a  little  brown  bird  without  a 
song!" 

The  luxurious  suggestions  of  her  dress,  and  the  way 
her  warm  youth  became  it,  drew  her  back  to  memories 
of  a  childhood  nestled  in  beauty  and  gentle  ways,  be- 
fore her  handsome  prodigal  father  had  died,  and 
her  mother's  face  had  grown  pinched  in  the  long 
struggle  with  poverty.  But  those  memories  were  after 
all  less  dear  to  Justine  than  the  grey  years  following, 
when,  growing  up,  she  had  helped  to  clear  a  space  in 
the  wilderness  for  their  tiny  hearth-fire,  when  her  own 
efforts  had  fed  the  flame  and  roofed  it  in  from  the 
weather.  A  great  heat,  kindled  at  that  hearth,  had 
burned  in  her  veins,  making  her  devour  her  work, 
lighting  and  warming  the  long  cold  days,  and  reddening 
the  horizon  through  dark  passages  of  revolt  and  failure; 
and  she  felt  all  the  more  deeply  the  chill  of  reaction  that 
set  in  with  her  mother's  death. 

She  thought  she  had  chosen  her  work  as  a  nurse  in 
a  spirit  of  high  disinterestedness;  but  in  the  first  hours 
of  her  bereavement  it  seemed  as  though  only  the  per- 
sonal aim  had  sustained  her.  For  a  while,  after  this, 
her  sick  people  became  to  her  mere  bundles  of  disin- 
[  146] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

tegrating  matter,  and  she  shrank  from  physical  pain 
with  a  distaste  the  deeper  because,  mechanically,  she 
could  not  help  working  on  to  relieve  it.  Gradually  her 
sound  nature  passed  out  of  this  morbid  phase,  and  she 
took  up  her  task  with  deeper  pity  if  less  exalted  ardour; 
glad  to  do  her  part  in  the  vast  impersonal  labour  of 
easing  the  world's  misery,  but  longing  with  all  the  warm 
instincts  of  youth  for  a  special  load  to  lift,  a  single  hand 
to  clasp. 

Ah,  it  was  cruel  to  be  alive,  to  be  young,  to  bubble 
with  springs  of  mirth  and  tenderness  and  folly,  and  to 
live  in  perpetual  contact  with  decay  and  pain — to  look 
persistently  into  the  grey  face  of  death  without  having 
lifted  even  a  corner  of  life's  veil !  Now  and  then,  when 
she  felt  her  youth  flame  through  the  sheath  of  dullness 
which  was  gradually  enclosing  it,  she  rebelled  at  the 
conditions  that  tied  a  spirit  like  hers  to  its  monotonous 
task,  while  others,  without  a  quiver  of  wings  on  their 
dull  shoulders,  or  a  note  of  music  in  their  hearts,  had 
the  whole  wide  world  to  range  through,  and  saw  in  it 
no  more  than  a  frightful  emptiness  to  be  shut  out  with 
tight  walls  of  habit.  .  . 

A  tap  on  the  door  announced  Mrs.  Dressel,  garbed  for 
conquest,  and  bestowing  on  her  brilliant  person  the 
last  anxious  touches  of  the  artist  reluctant  to  part  from 
a  masterpiece. 

I  W] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"My  dear,  how  well  you  look!  I  knew  that  dress 
would  be  becoming!"  she  exclaimed,  generously  trans- 
ferring her  self-approval  to  Justine;  and  adding,  as  the 
latter  moved  toward  her:  "I  wish  Westy  Gaines  could 
see  you  now!" 

"Well,  he  will  presently,"  Miss  Brent  rejoined, 
ignoring  the  slight  stress  on  the  name. 

Mrs.  Dressel  continued  to  brood  on  her  maternally. 
"Justine — I  wish  you'd  tell  me!  You  say  you  hate 
the  life  you're  leading  now — but  isn't  there  somebody 
who  might ?" 

"Give  me  another,  with  lace  dresses  in  it?"  Jus- 
tine's slight  shrug  might  have  seemed  theatrical,  had  it 
not  been  a  part  of  the  ceaseless  dramatic  play  of  her 
flexible  person.  "There  might  be,  perhaps.  .  .  only 
I'm  not  sure — '  She  broke  off  whimsically. 

"Not  sure  of  what?" 

"That  this  kind  of  dress  might  not  always  be  a  little 
tight  on  the  shoulders." 

"Tight  on  the  shoulders?  What  do  you  mean,  Jus- 
tine? My  clothes  simply  hang  on  you!" 

"Oh,  Effie  dear,  don't  you  remember  the  fable  of  the 
wings  under  the  skin,  that  sprout  when  one  meets  a 
pair  of  kindred  shoulders?"  And,  as  Mrs.  Dressel 
bent  on  her  a  brow  of  unenlightenment — "Well,  it 
doesn't  matter:  I  only  meant  that  I've  always  been 
afraid  good  clothes  might  keep  my  wings  from  sprout- 
[148] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

ing!"  She  turned  back  to  the  glass,  giving  herself  a 
last  light  touch  such  as  she  had  bestowed  on  the  roses. 

"And  that  reminds  me,"  she  continued — "how  about 
Mr.  Amherst's  wings?" 

"John  Amherst?"  Mrs.  Dressel  brightened  into 
immediate  attention.  "Why,  do  you  know  him?" 

"Not  as  the  owner  of  the  Westmore  Mills;  but  I 
came  across  him  as  their  assistant  manager  three  years 
ago,  at  the  Hope  Hospital,  and  he  was  starting  a  very 
promising  pair  then.  I  wonder  if  they're  doing  as  well 
under  his  new  coat." 

"I'm  not  sure  that  I  understand  you  when  you  talk 
poetry,"  said  Mrs.  Dressel  with  less  interest;  "but  per- 
sonally I  can't  say  I  like  John  Amherst — and  he  is  cer- 
tainly not  worthy  of  such  a  lovely  woman  as  Mrs.  West- 
more.  Of  course  she  would  never  let  any  one  see  that 
she's  not  perfectly  happy;  but  I'm  told  he  has  given 
them  all  a  great  deal  of  trouble  by  interfering  in  the 
management  of  the  mills,  and  his  manner  is  so  cold  and 
sarcastic — the  truth  is,  I  suppose  he's  never  quite  at 
ease  in  society.  Her  family  have  never  been  really  rec- 
onciled to  the  marriage;  and  Westy  Gaines  says " 

"Ah,  Westy  Gaines  would,"  Justine  interposed  lightly. 
"But  if  Mrs.  Amherst  is  really  the  Bessy  Langhope  I 
used  to  know  it  must  be  rather  a  struggle  for  the  wings ! " 

Mrs.  Dressel's  flagging  interest  settled  on  the  one 
glimpse  of  fact  in  this  statement.  "It's  such  a  coinci- 
[  149] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

dence  that  you  should  have  known  her  too!  Was  she 
always  so  perfectly  fascinating?  I  wish  I  knew  how 
she  gives  that  look  to  her  hair!" 

Justine  gathered  up  the  lace  sunshade  and  long 
gloves  which  her  friend  had  lent  her.  "There  was  not 
much  more  that  was  genuine  about  her  character — 
that  was  her  very  own,  I  mean — than  there  is  about  my 
appearance  at  this  moment.  She  was  always  the  dear- 
est little  chameleon  in  the  world,  taking  everybody's 
colour  in  the  most  flattering  way,  and  giving  back,  I 
must  say,  a  most  charming  reflection — if  you'll  excuse 
the  mixed  metaphor;  but  when  one  got  her  by  herself, 
with  no  reflections  to  catch,  one  found  she  hadn't  any 
particular  colour  of  her  own.  One  of  the  girls  used  to 
say  she  ought  to  wear  a  tag,  because  she  was  so  easily 
mislaid —  Now  then,  I'm  ready!" 

Justine  advanced  to  the  door,  and  Mrs.  Dressel  fol- 
lowed her  downstairs,  reflecting  with  pardonable  com- 
placency that  one  of  the  disadvantages  of  being  clever 
was  that  it  tempted  one  to  say  sarcastic  things  of  other 
women — than  which  she  could  imagine  no  more  crying 
social  error. 

During  the  drive  to  the  garden-party,  Justine's 
thoughts,  drawn  to  the  past  by  the  mention  of  Bessy 
Langhope's  name,  reverted  to  the  comic  inconsequences 
of  her  own  lot — to  that  persistent  irrelevance  of  inci- 
dent that  had  once  made  her  compare  herself  to  an 
[  150] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

actor  always  playing  his  part  before  the  wrong  stage- 
setting.  Was  there  not,  for  instance,  a  mocking  in- 
congruity in  the  fact  that  a  creature  so  leaping  with 
life  should  have,  for  chief  outlet,  the  narrow  mental 
channel  of  the  excellent  couple  between  whom  she  was 
now  being  borne  to  the  Gaines  garden-party  ?  All  her 
friendships  were  the  result  of  propinquity  or  of  early 
association,  and  fate  had  held  her  imprisoned  in  a  circle 
of  well-to-do  mediocrity,  peopled  by  just  such  figures 
as  those  of  the  kindly  and  prosperous  Dressels.  Effie 
Dressel,  the  daughter  of  a  cousin  of  Mrs.  Brent's,  had 
obscurely  but  safely  allied  herself  with  the  heavy  blond 
young  man  who  was  to  succeed  his  father  as  President 
of  the  Union  Bank,  and  who  was  already  regarded  by 
the  "solid  business  interests"  of  Hanaford  as  possess- 
ing talents  likely  to  carry  him  far  in  the  development 
of  the  paternal  fortunes.  Harry  Dressel's  honest  coun- 
tenance gave  no  evidence  of  peculiar  astuteness,  and  he 
was  in  fact  rather  the  product  of  special  conditions  than 
of  an  irresistible  bent.  He  had  the  sound  Saxon  love 
of  games,  and  the  most  interesting  game  he  had  ever 
been  taught  was  "business."  He  was  a  simple  do- 
mestic being,  and  according  to  Hanaford  standards  the 
most  obvious  obligation  of  the  husband  and  father  was 
to  make  his  family  richer.  If  Harry  Dressel  had  ever 
formulated  his  aims,  he  might  have  said  that  he  wanted 
to  be  the  man  whom  Hanaford  most  respected,  and 
[151] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

that  was  only  another  way  of  saying,  the  richest  man 
in  Hanaford.  Effie  embraced  his  creed  with  a  zeal 
facilitated  by  such  evidence  of  its  soundness  as  a  grow- 
ing income  and  the  early  prospects  of  a  carriage.  Her 
mother-in-law,  a  kind  old  lady  with  a  simple  unques- 
tioning love  of  money,  had  told  her  on  her  wedding  day 
that  Harry's  one  object  would  always  be  to  make  his 
family  proud  of  him;  and  the  recent  purchase  of  the 
victoria  in  which  Justine  and  the  Dressels  were  now 
seated  was  regarded  by  the  family  as  a  striking  fulfill- 
ment of  this  prophecy. 

In  the  course  of  her  hospital  work  Justine  had  of 
necessity  run  across  far  different  types;  but  from  the 
connections  thus  offered  she  was  often  held  back  by 
the  subtler  shades  of  taste  that  civilize  human  inter- 
course. Her  world,  in  short,  had  been  chiefly  peopled 
by  the  dull  or  the  crude,  and,  hemmed  in  between  the 
two,  she  had  created  for  herself  an  inner  kingdom  where 
the  fastidiousness  she  had  to  set  aside  in  her  outward 
relations  recovered  its  full  sway.  There  must  be 
actual  beings  worthy  of  admission  to  this  secret  pre- 
cinct, but  hitherto  they  had  not  come  her  way;  and  the 
sense  that  they  were  somewhere  just  out  of  reach  still 
gave  an  edge  of  youthful  curiosity  to  each  encounter 
with  a  new  group  of  people. 

Certainly,  Mrs.  Gaines's  garden-party  seemed  an  un- 
likely field  for  the  exercise  of  such  curiosity:  Justine's 
[  152] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

few  glimpses  of  Hanaford  society  had  revealed  it  as 
rather  a  dull  thick  body,  with  a  surface  stimulated  only 
by  ill-advised  references  to  the  life  of  larger  capitals; 
and  the  concentrated  essence  of  social  Hanaford  was 
of  course  to  be  found  at  the  Gaines  entertainments.  It 
presented  itself,  however,  in  the  rich  June  afternoon, 
on  the  long  shadows  of  the  well-kept  lawn,  and  among 
the  paths  of  the  rose-garden,  in  its  most  amiable  aspect; 
and  to  Justine,  wearied  by  habitual  contact  with  ugli- 
ness and  suffering,  there  was  pure  delight  in  the  verdant 
setting  of  the  picture,  and  in  the  light  harmonious  tints 
of  the  figures  peopling  it.  If  the  company  was  dull, 
it  was  at  least  decorative;  and  poverty,  misery  and  dirt 
were  shut  out  by  the  placid  unconsciousness  of  the 
guests  as  securely  as  by  the  leafy  barriers  of  the  garden. 


X 


"    \  H,  Mrs.  Dressel,  we  were  on  the  lookout  for  you — 
JL\.  waiting  for  the  curtain  to  rise.  Your  friend  Miss 

Brent  ?     Juliana,  Mrs.  Dressel's  friend  Miss  Brent " 

Near  the  brilliantly-striped  marquee  that  formed  the 
axis  of  the  Gaines  garden-parties,  Mr.  Halford  Gaines, 
a  few  paces  from  his  wife  and  daughters,  stood  radiating 
a  royal  welcome  on  the  stream  of  visitors  pouring  across 
the  lawn.  It  was  only  to  eyes  perverted  by  a  different 
social  perspective  that  there  could  be  any  doubt  as  to 
[  153] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

the  importance  of  the  Gaines  entertainments.  To 
Hanaford  itself  they  were  epoch-making;  and  if  any 
rebellious  spirit  had  cherished  a  doubt  of  the  fact,  it 
would  have  been  quelled  by  the  official  majesty  of  Mr. 
Gaines's  frock-coat  and  the  comprehensive  cordiality 
of  his  manner. 

There  were  moments  when  New  York  hung  like  a 
disquieting  cloud  on  the  social  horizon  of  Mrs.  Gaines 
and  her  daughters;  but  to  Halford  Gaines  Hanaford 
was  all  in  all.  As  an  exponent  of  the  popular  and 
patriotic  "good-enough-for-me"  theory  he  stood  in 
high  favour  at  the  Hanaford  Club,  where  a  too-keen 
consciousness  of  the  metropolis  was  alternately  com- 
bated by  easy  allusion  and  studied  omission,  and  where 
the  unsettled  fancies  of  youth  were  chastened  and 
steadied  by  the  reflection  that,  if  Hanaford  was  good 
enough  for  Halford  Gaines,  it  must  offer  opportunities 
commensurate  with  the  largest  ideas  of  life. 

Never  did  Mr.  Gaines's  manner  bear  richer  witness 
to  what  could  be  extracted  from  Hanaford  than  when 
he  was  in  the  act  of  applying  to  it  the  powerful  pressure 
of  his  hospitality.  The  resultant  essence  was  so  bub- 
bling with  social  exhilaration  that,  to  its  producer  at 
any  rate,  its  somewhat  mixed  ingredients  were  lost  in 
one  highly  flavoured  draught.  Under  ordinary  cir- 
cumstances no  one  discriminated  more  keenly  than  Mr. 
Gaines  between  different  shades  of  social  importance; 
[154] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

but  any  one  who  was  entertained  by  him  was  momen- 
tarily ennobled  by  the  fact,  and  not  all  the  anxious 
telegraphy  of  his  wife  and  daughters  could,  for  instance, 
recall  to  him  that  the  striking  young  woman  in  Mrs. 
Dressel's  wake  was  only  some  obscure  protegee,  whom 
it  was  odd  of  Effie  to  have  brought,  and  whose  pres- 
ence was  quite  unnecessary  to  emphasize. 

"Juliana,  Miss  Brent  tells  me  she  has  never  seen  our 
roses.  Oh,  there  are  other  roses  in  Hanaford,  Miss 
Brent;  I  don't  mean  to  imply  that  no  one  else  attempts 
them;  but  unless  you  can  afford  to  give  carte  blanche 
to  your  man — and  mine  happens  to  be  something  of 
a  specialist.  .  .  well,  if  you'll  come  with  me,  I'll  let 
them  speak  for  themselves.  I  always  say  that  if 
people  want  to  know  what  we  can  do  'they  must  come 
and  see — they'll  never  find  out  from  me!" 

A  more  emphatic  signal  from  his  wife  arrested  Mr. 
Gaines  as  he  was  in  the  act  of  leading  Miss  Brent  away. 

"Eh?— What?  The  Amhersts  and  Mrs.  Ansell? 
You  must  excuse  me  then,  I'm  afraid — but  Westy  shall 
take  you.  Westy,  my  boy,  it's  an  ill- wind.  .  .  I  want 
you  to  show  this  young  lady  our  roses."  And  Mr. 
Gaines,  with  mingled  reluctance  and  satisfaction,  turned 
away  to  receive  the  most  important  guests  of  the  day. 

It  had  not  needed  his  father's  summons  to  draw  the 
expert  Westy  to  Miss  Brent:  he  was  already  gravitating 
toward  her,  with  the  nonchalance  bred  of  cosmopolitan 
I  155  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

successes,  but  with  a  directness  of  aim  due  also  to  his 
larger  opportunities  of  comparison. 

"The  roses  will  do,"  he  explained,  as  he  guided  her 
through  the  increasing  circle  of  guests  about  his  mother; 
and  in  answer  to  Justine's  glance  of  enquiry:  "To  get 
you  away,  I  mean.  They're  not  much  in  themselves, 
you  know;  but  everything  of  the  governor's  always 
begins  with  a  capital  letter." 

"Oh,  but  these  roses  deserve  to,"  Justine  exclaimed, 
as  they  paused  under  the  evergreen  archway  at  the 
farther  end  of  the  lawn. 

"I  don't  know — not  if  you've  been  in  England," 
Westy  murmured,  watching  furtively  for  the  impres- 
sion produced,  on  one  who  had  presumably  not,  by 
the  great  blush '  of  colour  massed  against  its  dusky 
background  of  clipped  evergreens. 

Justine  smiled.  "I  have  been — but  I've  been  in  the 
slums  since;  in  horrible  places  that  the  least  of  those 
flowers  would  have  lighted  up  like  a  lamp." 

Westy 's  guarded  glance  imprudently  softened.  "It's 
the  beastliest  kind  of  a  shame,  your  ever  having  had 
to  do  such  work " 

"Oh,  had  to?"  she  flashed  back  at  him  disconcert- 
ingly. "It  was  my  choice,  you  know:  there  was  a 
time  when  I  couldn't  live  without  it.  Philanthropy  is 
one  of  the  subtlest  forms  of  self-indulgence." 

Westy  met  this  with  a  vague  laugh.  If  a  chap  who 
[  156  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

was  as  knowing  as  the  devil  did,  once  in  a  way,  in- 
dulge himself  in  the  luxury  of  talking  recklessly  to  a 
girl  with  exceptional  eyes,  it  was  rather  upsetting  to 
discover  in  those  eyes  no  consciousness  of  the  risk  he 
had  taken! 

"  But  I  am  rather  tired  of  it  now,"  she  continued,  and 
his  look  grew  guarded  again.  After  all,  they  were  all 
the  same — except  in  that  particular  matter  of  the  eyes. 
At  the  thought,  he  risked  another  look,  hung  on  the 
sharp  edge  of  betrayal,  and  was  snatched  back,  not  by 
the  manly  instinct  of  self-preservation,  but  by  some 
imp  of  mockery  lurking  in  the  depths  that  lured  him. 

He  recovered  his  balance  and  took  refuge  in  a  tone 
of  worldly  ease.  "I  saw  a  chap  the  other  day  who 
said  he  knew  you  when  you  were  at  Saint  Elizabeth's — 
wasn't  that  the  name  of  your  hospital  ?" 

Justine  assented.  "One  of  the  doctors,  I  suppose. 
Where  did  you  meet  him?" 

Ah,  now  she  should  see!  He  summoned  his  utmost 
carelessness  of  tone.  "Down  on  Long  Island  last  week 
— I  was  spending  Sunday  with  the  Amhersts."  He 
held  up  the  glittering  fact  to  her,  and  watched  for  the 
least  little  blink  of  awe;  but  her  lids  never  trembled. 
It  was  a  confession  of  social  blindness  which  painfully 
negatived  Mrs.  Dressel's  hint  that  she  knew  the  Am- 
hersts; if  she  had  even  known  of  them,  she  could  not 
so  fatally  have  missed  his  point. 
[  157] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Long  Island?"  She  drew  her  brows  together  in 
puzzled  retrospection.  "I  wonder  if  it  could  have  been 
Stephen  Wyant  ?  I  heard  he  had  taken  over  his  uncle's 
practice  somewhere  near  New  York." 

"Wyant — that's  the  name.  He's  the  doctor  at  Clif- 
ton, the  nearest  town  to  the  Amhersts'  place.  Little 
Cicely  had  a  cold — Cicely  Westmore,  you  know — a 
small  cousin  of  mine,  by  the  way — "  he  switched  a  rose- 
branch  loftily  out  of  her  path,  explaining,  as  she  moved 
on,  that  Cicely  was  the  daughter  of  Mrs.  Amherst's 
first  marriage  to  Richard  Westmore.  "That's  the  way 
I  happened  to  see  this  Dr.  Wyant.  Bessy — Mrs.  Am- 
herst — asked  him  to  stop  to  luncheon,  after  he'd  seen 
the  kid.  He  seems  rather  a  discontented  sort  of  a 
chap — grumbling  at  not  having  a  New  York  practice. 
I  should  have  thought  he  had  rather  a  snug  berth,  down 
there  at  Lynbrook,  with  all  those  swells  to  dose." 

Justine  smiled.  "  Dr.  Wyant  is  ambitious,  and  swells 
don't  have  as  interesting  diseases  as  poor  people.  One 
gets  tired  of  giving  them  bread  pills  for  imaginary  ail- 
ments. But  Dr.  Wyant  is  not  strong  himself  and  I 
fancy  a  country  practice  is  better  for  him  than  hard 
work  in  town." 

"You  think  him  clever  though,  do  you?"  Westy  en- 
quired absently.  He  was  already  bored  with  the  sub- 
ject of  the  Long  Island  doctor,  and  vexed  at  the  lack 
of  perception  that  led  his  companion  to  show  more  con- 
[  158  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

cern  in  the  fortunes  of  a  country  practitioner  than  in 
the  fact  of  his  own  visit  to  the  Amhersts;  but  the  topic 
was  a  safe  one,  and  it  was  agreeable  to  see  how  her 
face  kindled  when  she  was  interested. 

Justine  mused  on  his  question.  "  I  think  he  has  very 
great  promise — which  he  is  almost  certain  not  to  ful- 
fill," she  answered  with  a  sigh  which  seemed  to  Westy's 
anxious  ear  to  betray  a  more  than  professional  interest 
in  the  person  referred  to. 

"Oh,  come  now — why  not?  With  the  Amhersts  to 
give  him  a  start — I  heard  my  cousin  recommending  him 
to  a  lot  of  people  the  other  day " 

"Oh,  he  may  become  a  fashionable  doctor,"  Justine 
assented  indifferently;  to  which  her  companion  re- 
joined, with  a  puzzled  stare:  "That's  just  what  I  mean 
— with  Bessy  backing  him!" 

"Has  Mrs.  Amherst  become  such  a  power,  then?" 
Justine  asked,  taking  up  the  coveted  theme  just  as  he 
despaired  of  attracting  her  to  it. 

"My  cousin?"  he  stretched  the  two  syllables  to  the 
cracking-point.  "Well,  she's  awfully  rich,  you  know; 
and  there's  nobody  smarter.  Don't  you  think  so?" 

"I  don't  know;  it's  so  long  since  I've  seen  her." 

He  brightened.  "You  did  know  her,  then  ?  "  But  the 
discovery  made  her  obtuseness  the  more  inexplicable! 

"Oh,  centuries  ago:   in  another  world." 

"  Centuries — I  like  that ! "  Westy  gallantly  protested, 
[  159  1 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

his  ardour  kindling  as  she  swam  once  more  within  his 
social  ken.  "And  Amherst?  You  know  him  too,  1 
suppose  ?  By  Jove,  here  he  is  now — 

He  signalled  a  tall  figure  strolling  slowly  toward 
them  with  bent  head  and  brooding  gaze.  Justine's  eye 
had  retained  a  vivid  image  of  the  man  with  whom, 
scarcely  three  years  earlier,  she  had  lived  through  a 
moment  of  such  poignant  intimacy,  and  she  recognized 
at  once  his  lean  outline,  and  the  keen  spring  of  his 
features,  still  veiled  by  the  same  look  of  inward  absorp- 
tion. She  noticed,  as  he  raised  his  hat  in  response  to 
Westy  Gaines's  greeting,  that  the  vertical  lines  between 
his  brows  had  deepened;  and  a  moment  later  she  was 
aware  that  this  change  was  the  visible  token  of  others 
which  went  deeper  than  the  fact  of  his  good  clothes  and 
his  general  air  of  leisure  and  well-being — changes  per- 
ceptible to  her  only  in  the  startled  sense  of  how  pros- 
perity had  aged  him. 

"Hallo,  Amherst — trying  to  get  under  cover?"  Westy 
jovially  accosted  him,  with  a  significant  gesture  toward 
the  crowded  lawn  from  which  the  new-comer  had  evi- 
dently fled.  "I  was  just  telling  Miss  Brent  that  this 
is  the  safest  place  on  these  painful  occasions — Oh,  con- 
found it,  it's  not  as  safe  as  I  thought!  Here's  one  of 
my  sisters  making  for  me!" 

There  ensued  a  short  conflict  of  words,  before  his 
feeble  flutter  of  resistance  was  borne  down  by  a  resolute 
[  160] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Miss  Gaines  who,  as  she  swept  him  back  to  the  mar- 
quee, cried  out  to  Amherst  that  her  mother  was  ask- 
ing for  him  too;  and  then  Justine  had  time  to  observe 
that  her  remaining  companion  had  no  intention  of 
responding  to  his  hostess's  appeal. 

Westy,  in  naming  her,  had  laid  just  enough  stress  on 
the  name  to  let  it  serve  as  a  reminder  or  an  introduction, 
as  circumstances  might  decide,  and  she  saw  that  Am- 
herst, roused  from  his  abstraction  by  the  proffered  clue, 
was  holding  his  hand  out  doubtfully. 

"I  think  we  haven't  met  forborne  years,"  he  said. 

Justine  smiled.  "I  have  a  better  reason  than  you 
for  remembering  the  exact  date;"  and  in  response  to 
his  look  of  surprise  she  added:  "You  made  me  commit 
a  professional  breach  of  faith,  and  I've  never  known 
since  whether  to  be  glad  or  sorry." 

Amherst  still  bent  on  her  the  gaze  which  seemed  to 
find  in  external  details  an  obstacle  rather  than  a  help 
to  recognition;  but  suddenly  his  face  cleared.  "It  was 
you  who  told  me  the  truth  about  poor  Dillon!  I 
couldn't  imagine  why  I  seemed  to  see  you  in  such  a 
different  setting.  .  ." 

"Oh,  I'm  disguised  as  a  lady  this  afternoon,"  she  said 
smiling.  "But  I'm  glad  you  saw  through  the  disguise." 

He  smiled  back  at  her.     "Are  you?     Why?" 

"It  seems  to  make  it — if  it's  so  transparent — less  of 
a  sham,  less  of  a  dishonesty,"  she  began  impulsively, 
[161] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

and  then  paused  again,  a  little  annoyed  at  the  over- 
emphasis of  her  words.  Why  was  she  explaining  and 
excusing  herself  to  this  stranger?  Did  she  propose  to 
tell  him  next  that  she  had  borrowed  her  dress  from 
Effie  Dressel?  To  cover  her  confusion  she  went  on 
with  a  slight  laugh:  "But  you  haven't  told  me." 

"What  was  I  to  tell  you?" 

"Whether  to  be  glad  or  sorry  that  I  broke  my  vow 
and  told  the  truth  about  Dillon." 

They  were  standing  face  to  face  in  the  solitude  of 
the  garden-walk,  forgetful  of  everything  but  the  sudden 
surprised  sense  of  intimacy  that  had  marked  their 
former  brief  communion.  Justine  had  raised  her  eyes 
half-laughingly  to  Amherst,  but  they  dropped  before 
the  unexpected  seriousness  of  his. 

"Why  do  you  want  to  know  ?"  he  asked. 

She  made  an  effort  to  sustain  the  note  of  pleasantry. 

"Well — it  might,  for  instance,  determine  my  future 
conduct.  You  see  I'm  still  a  nurse,  and  such  problems 
are  always  likely  to  present  themselves." 

"Ah,  then  don't!" 

"Don't?" 

"I  mean — !  He  hesitated  a  moment,  reaching  up 
to  break  a  rose  from  the  branch  that  tapped  his  shoulder. 
"I  was  only  thinking  what  risks  we  run  when  we  scram- 
ble into  the  chariot  of  the  gods  and  try  to  do  the  driving. 
Be  passive — be  passive,  and  you'll  be  happier!" 
[  162] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Oh,  as  to  that — !"  She  swept  it  aside  with  one  of 
her  airy  motions.  "But  Dillon,  for  instance — would  he 
have  been  happier  if  I'd  been  passive?" 

Amherst  seemed  to  ponder.  "There  again — how 
can  one  tell?" 

"And  the  risk's  not  worth  taking?" 

"No!" 

She  paused,  and  they  looked  at  each  other  again. 
"Do  you  mean  that  seriously,  I  wonder  ?  Do  you " 

"Act  on  it  myself?  God  forbid!  The  gods  drive 
so  badly.  There's  poor  Dillon.  .  .  he  happened  to 
be  in  their  way.  ..  as  we  all  are  at  times."  He 
pulled  himself  up,  and  went  on  in  a  matter-of-fact  tone: 
"In  Dillon's  case,  however,  my  axioms  don't  apply. 
When  my  wife  heard  the  truth  she  was,  of  course,  im- 
mensely kind  to  him;  and  if  it  hadn't  been  for  you  she 
might  never  have  known." 

Justine  smiled.  "I  think  you  would  have  found  out 
— I  was  only  the  humble  instrument.  But  now — " 
she  hesitated — "now  you  must  be  able  to  do  so  much — " 

Amherst  lifted  his  head,  and  she  saw  the  colour  rise 
under  his  fair  skin.  "Out  at  Westmore?  You've 
never  been  there  since  ?  Yes — my  wife  has  made  some 
changes;  but  it's  all  so  problematic — and  one  would 
have  to  live  here.  .  ." 

"You  don't,  then?" 

He  answered  by  an  imperceptible  shrug.  "Of  course 
[  163] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

I'm  here  of  ten ;  and  she  comes  now  and  then.  But  the 
journey's  tiresome,  and  it  is  not  always  easy  for  her  to 
get  away."  He  checked  himself,  and  Justine  saw  that 
he,  in  turn,  was  suddenly  conscious  of  the  incongruity 
of  explaining  and  extenuating  his  personal  situation  to 
a  stranger.  "But  then  we're  not  strangers!"  a  voice 
in  her  exulted,  just  as  he  added,  with  an  embarrassed 
attempt  to  efface  and  yet  justify  his  moment  of  expan- 
sion: "That  reminds  me — I  think  you  know  my  wife. 
I  heard  her  asking  Mrs.  Dressel  about  you.  She  wants 
so  much  to  see  you." 

The  transition  had  been  effected,  at  the  expense  of 
dramatic  interest,  but  to  the  obvious  triumph  of  social 
observances;  and  to  Justine,  after  all,  regaining  at  his 
side  the  group  about  the  marquee,  the  interest  was  not 
so  much  diminished  as  shifted  to  the  no  less  suggestive 
problem  of  studying  the  friend  of  her  youth  in  the  un- 
expected character  of  John  Amherst's  wife. 

Meanwhile,  however,  during  the  brief  transit  across 
the  Gaines  greensward,  her  thoughts  were  still  busy 
with  Amherst.  She  had  seen  at  once  that  the  pecuilar 
sense  of  intimacy  reawakened  by  their  meeting  had 
been  chilled  and  deflected  by  her  first  allusion  to  the 
topic  which  had  previously  brought  them  together: 
Amherst  had  drawn  back  as  soon  as  she  named  the 
mills.  What  could  be  the  cause  of  his  reluctance? 
When  they  had  last  met,  the  subject  burned  within 

[  164] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

him :  her  being  in  actual  fact  a  stranger  had  not,  then, 
been  an  obstacle  to  his  confidences.  Now  that  he  was 
master  at  Westmore  it  was  plain  that  another  tone 
became  him — that  his  situation  necessitated  a  greater 
reserve;  but  her  enquiry  did  not  imply  the  least  wish 
to  overstep  this  restriction:  it  merely  showed  her  re- 
membrance of  his  frankly-avowed  interest  in  the  opera- 
tives. Justine  was  struck  by  the  fact  that  so  natural 
an  allusion  should  put  him  on  the  defensive.  She  did 
not  for  a  moment  believe  that  he  had  lost  his  interest 
in  the  mills;  and  that  his  point  of  view  should  have 
shifted  with  the  fact  of  ownership  she  rejected  as  an 
equally  superficial  reading  of  his  character.  The  man 
with  whom  she  had  talked  at  Dillon's  bedside  was  one 
in  whom  the  ruling  purposes  had  already  shaped  them- 
selves, and  to  whom  life,  in  whatever  form  it  came, 
must  henceforth  take  their  mould.  As  she  reached  this 
point  in  her  analysis,  it  occurred  to  her  that  his  shrink- 
ing from  the  subject  might  well  imply  not  indifference, 
but  a  deeper  preoccupation:  a  preoccupation  for  some 
reason  suppressed  and  almost  disavowed,  yet  sustaining 
the  more  intensely  its  painful  hidden  life.  From  this 
inference  it  was  but  a  leap  of  thought  to  the  next — 
that  the  cause  of  the  change  must  be  sought  outside  of 
himself,  in  some  external  influence  strong  enough  to 
modify  the  innate  lines  of  his  character.  And  where 
could  such  an  influence  be  more  obviously  sought  than 
[165] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

in  the  marriage  which  had  transformed  the  assistant 
manager  of  the  Westmore  Mills  not,  indeed,  into  their 
owner — that  would  rather  have  tended  to  simplify  the 
problem — but  into  the  husband  of  Mrs.  Westmore? 
After  all,  the  mills  were  Bessy's — and  for  a  farther 
understanding  of  the  case  it  remained  to  find  out  what 
manner  of  person  Bessy  had  become. 

Justine's  first  impression,  as  her  friend's  charming 
arms  received  her — with  an  eagerness  of  welcome  not 
lost  on  the  suspended  judgment  of  feminine  Hanaford 
— the  immediate  impression  was  of  a  gain  of  emphasis, 
of  individuality,  as  though  the  fluid  creature  she  re- 
membered had  belied  her  prediction,  and  run  at  last 
into  a  definite  mould.  Yes — Bessy  had  acquired  an 
outline:  a  graceful  one,  as  became  her  early  promise, 
though  with,  perhaps,  a  little  more  sharpness  of  edge 
than  her  youthful  texture  had  promised.  But  the  side 
she  turned  to  her  friend  was  still  all  softness — had  in  it 
a  hint  of  the  old  pliancy,  the  impulse  to  lean  and  en- 
lace, that  at  once  woke  in  Justine  the  corresponding 
instinct  of  guidance  and  protection,  so  that  their  first 
kiss,  before  a  word  was  spoken,  carried  the  two  back 
to  the  precise  relation  in  which  their  school-days  had 
left  them.  So  easy  a  reversion  to  the  past  left  no  room 
for  the  sense  of  subsequent  changes  by  which  such 
reunions  are  sometimes  embarrassed.  Justine's  sympa- 
thies had,  instinctively,  and  almost  at  once,  transferred 
[  166  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

themselves  to  Bessy's  side — passing  over  at  a  leap  the 
pained  recognition  that  there  were  sides  already — and 
Bessy  had  gathered  up  Justine  into  the  circle  of  gentle 
self-absorption  which  left  her  very  dimly  aware  of  any 
distinctive  characteristic  in  her  friends  except  that  of 
their  affection  for  herself — since  she  asked  only,  as 
she  appealingly  put  it,  that  they  should  all  be  "dread- 
fully fond"  of  her. 

"And  I've  wanted  you  so  often,  Justine:  you're  the 
only  clever  person  I'm  not  afraid  of,  because  your 
cleverness  always  used  to  make  things  clear  instead  of 
confusing  them.  I've  asked  so  many  people  about 
you — but  I  never  heard  a  word  till  just  the  other  day — 
wasn't  it  odd  ? — when  our  new  doctor  at  Rushton  hap- 
pened to  say  that  he  knew  you.  I've  been  rather  un- 
well lately — nervous  and  tired,  and  sleeping  badly — 
and  he  told  me  I  ought  to  keep  perfectly  quiet,  and  be 
under  the  care  of  a  nurse  who  could  make  me  do  as 
she  chose:  just  such  a  nurse  as  a  wonderful  Miss  Brent 
he  had  known  at  St.  Elizabeth's,  whose  patients  obeyed 
her  as  if  she'd  been  the  colonel  of  a  regiment.  His  de- 
scription made  me  laugh,  it  reminded  me  so  much  of 
the  way  you  used  to  make  me  do  what  you  wanted  at 
the  convent — and  then  it  suddenly  occurred  to  me  that 
I  had  heard  of  your  having  gone  in  for  nursing,  and  we 
compared  notes,  and  I  found  it  was  really  you !  Wasn't 
it  odd  that  we  should  discover  each  other  in  that  way  ? 
[  167] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

I  daresay  we  might  have  passed  in  the  street  and  never 
known  it — I'm  sure  I  must  be  horribly  changed.  .  ." 

Thus  Bessy  discoursed,  in  the  semi-isolation  to 
which,  under  an  overarching  beech-tree,  the  discretion 
of  their  hostess  had  allowed  the  two  friends  to  withdraw 
for  the  freer  exchange  of  confidences.  There  was,  at 
first  sight,  nothing  in  her  aspect  to  bear  out  Mrs.  Am- 
herst's  plaintive  allusion  to  her  health,  but  Justine, 
who  knew  that  she  had  lost  a  baby  a  few  months  pre- 
viously, assumed  that  the  effect  of  this  shock  still  lin- 
gered, though  evidently  mitigated  by  a  reviving  interest 
in  pretty  clothes  and  the  other  ornamental  accessories 
of  life.  Certainly  Bessy  Amherst  had  grown  into  the 
full  loveliness  which  her  childhood  promised.  She  had 
the  kind  of  finished  prettiness  that  declares  itself  early, 
holds  its  own  through  the  awkward  transitions  of  girl- 
hood, and  resists  the  strain  of  all  later  vicissitudes,  as 
though  miraculously  preserved  in  some  clear  medium 
impenetrable  to  the  wear  and  tear  of  living. 

"You  absurd  child!  You've  not  changed  a  bit  ex- 
cept to  grow  more  so!"  Justine  laughed,  paying 
amused  tribute  to  the  childish  craving  for  "a  compli- 
ment" that  still  betrayed  itself  in  Bessy's  eyes. 

"Well,  you  have,  then,  Justine — you've  grown  ex- 
traordinarily handsome!" 

"That  is  extraordinary  of  me,  certainly,"  the  other 
acknowledged  gaily.  "But  then  think  what  room  for 
[  168] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

improvement  there  was — and  how  much  time  I've  had 
to  improve  in!" 

"It  is  a  long  time,  isn't  it?"  Bessy  assented.  "I 
feel  so  intimate,  still,  with  the  old  Justine  of  the  con- 
vent, and  I  don't  know  the  new  one  a  bit.  Just  think — 
I've  a  great  girl  of  my  own,  almost  as  old  as  we  were 
when  we  went  to  the  Sacred  Heart.  But  perhaps  you 
don't  know  anything  about  me  either.  You  see,  I 
married  again  two  years  ago,  and  my  poor  baby 
died  last  March.  .  .  so  I  have  only  Cicely.  It  was 
such  a  disappointment — I  wanted  a  boy  dreadfully, 
and  I  understand  little  babies  so  much  better  than 
a  big  girl  like  Cicely.  .  .  Oh,  dear,  here  is  Juliana 
Gaines  bringing  up  some  more  tiresome  people!  It's 
such  a  bore,  but  John  says  I  must  know  them  all.  Well, 
thank  goodness  we've  only  one  more  day  in  this  dread- 
ful place — and  of  course  I  shall  see  you,  dear,  before 
we  go.  .  ." 

XI 

A«TER  conducting  Miss  Brent  to  his  wife,  John 
Amherst,  by  the  exercise  of  considerable  strategic 
skill,  had  once  more  contrived  to  detach  himself  from 
the  throng  on  the  lawn,  and,  regaining  a  path  in  the 
shrubbery,  had  taken  refuge  on  the  verandah  of  the 
house. 

Here,  under  the  shade  of  the  awning,  two  ladies  were 
[  169  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

seated  in  a  seclusion  agreeably  tempered  by  the  distant 
strains  of  the  Hanaford  band,  and  by  the  shifting  pros- 
pect of  the  groups  below  them. 

"Ah,  here  he  is  now!"  the  younger  of  the  two  ex- 
claimed, turning  on  Amherst  the  smile  of  intelligence 
that  Mrs.  Eustace  Ansell  was  in  the  habit  of  substitut- 
ing for  the  idle  preliminaries  of  conversation.  "We 
were  not  talking  of  you,  though,"  she  added  as  Am- 
herst took  the  seat  to  which  his  mother  beckoned  him, 
"but  of  Bessy — which,  I  suppose,  is  almost  as  indis- 
creet." 

She  added  the  last  phrase  after  an  imperceptible 
pause,  and  as  if  in  deprecation  of  the  hardly  more  per- 
ceptible frown  which,  at  the  mention  of  his  wife's  name, 
had  deepened  the  lines  between  Amherst 's  brows. 

"Indiscreet  of  his  own  mother  and  his  wife's  friend  ?" 
Mrs.  Amherst  protested,  laying  her  trimly-gloved  hand 
on  her  son's  arm;  while  the  latter,  with  his  eyes  on 
her  companion,  said  slowly:  "Mrs.  Ansell  knows  that 
indiscretion  is  the  last  fault  of  which  her  friends  are 
likely  to  accuse  her." 

"Raison  de  plus,  you  mean?"  she  laughed,  meeting 
squarely  the  challenge  that  passed  between  them  under 
Mrs.  Amherst's  puzzled  gaze.  "Well,  if  I  take  advan- 
tage of  my  reputation  for  discretion  to  meddle  a  little 
now  and  then,  at  least  I  do  so  in  a  good  cause.  I  was 
just  saying  how  much  I  wish  that  you  would  take  Bessy 
[170] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

to  Europe;  and  I  am  so  sure  of  my  cause,  in  this  case, 
that  I  am  going  to  leave  it  to  your  mother  to  give  you 
my  reasons." 

She  rose  as  she  spoke,  not  with  any  sign  of  haste  or 
embarrassment,  but  as  if  gracefully  recognizing  the 
desire  of  mother  and  son  to  be  alone  together;  but 
Amherst,  rising  also,  made  a  motion  to  detain  her. 

"  No  one  else  will  be  able  to  put  your  reasons  half  so 
convincingly,"  he  said  with  a  slight  smile, "  and  I  am  sure 
my  mother  would  much  rather  be  spared  the  attempt." 

Mrs.  Ansell  met  the  smile  as  freely  as  she  had  met 
the  challenge.  "My  dear  Lucy,"  she  rejoined,  laying, 
as  she  reseated  herself,  a  light  caress  on  Mrs.  Amherst's 
hand,  "I'm  sorry  to  be  flattered  at  your  expense,  but 
it's  not  in  human  nature  to  resist  such  an  appeal.  You 
see,"  she  added,  raising  her  eyes  to  Amherst,  "how  sure 
I  am  of  myself — and  of  you,  when  you've  heard  me." 

"Oh,  John  is  always  ready  to  hear  one,"  his  mother 
murmured  innocently. 

"Well,  I  don't  know  that  I  shall  even  ask  him  to  do 
as  much  as  that — I'm  so  sure,  after  all,  that  my  sugges- 
tion carries  its  explanation  with  it." 

There  was  a  moment's  pause,  during  which  Amherst 
let  his  eyes  wander  absently  over  the  dissolving  groups 
on  the  lawn. 

"The  suggestion  that  I  should  take  Bessy  to  Eu- 
rope?"   He  paused  again.     "When — next  autumn?" 
[171] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"No:  now — at  once.     On  a  long  honeymoon." 

He  frowned  slightly  at  the  last  word,  passing  it  by  to 
revert  to  the  direct  answer  to  his  question. 

"At  once?  No — I  can't  see  that  the  suggestion 
carries  its  explanation  with  it." 

Mrs.  Ansell  looked  at  him  hesitatingly.  She  was 
conscious  of  the  ill-chosen  word  that  still  reverberated 
between  them,  and  the  unwonted  sense  of  having  blun- 
dered made  her,  for  the  moment,  less  completely  mis- 
tress of  herself. 

"Ah,  you'll  see  farther  presently — "  She  rose  again, 
unfurling  her  lace  sunshade,  as  if  to  give  a  touch  of 
definiteness  to  her  action.  "It's  not,  after  all,"  she 
added,  with  a  sweet  frankness,  "a  case  for  argument, 
and  still  less  for  persuasion.  My  reasons  are  excellent 
— I  should  insist  on  putting  them  to  you  myself  if  they 
were  not !  But  they're  so  good  that  I  can  leave  you  to 
find  them  out — and  to  back  them  up  with  your  own, 
which  will  probably  be  a  great  deal  better." 

She  summed  up  with  a  light  nod,  which  included  both 
Amherst  and  his  mother,  and  turning  to  descend  the 
verandah  steps,  waved  a  signal  to  Mr.  Langhope,  who 
was  limping  disconsolately  toward  the  house. 

"What  has  she  been  saying  to  you,  mother?'' 
Amherst  asked,  returning  to  his  seat  beside  his 
mother 

Mrs.  Amherst  replied  by  a  shake  of  her  head  and  a 
[  172] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

raised  forefinger  of  reproval.  "Now,  Johnny,  I  won't 
answer  a  single  question  till  you  smooth  out  those  lines 
between  your  eyes." 

Her  son  relaxed  his  frown  to  smile  back  at  her. 
"Well,  dear,  there  have  to  be  some  wrinkles  in  every 
family,  arid  as  you  absolutely  refuse  to  take  your 
share — "  His  eyes  rested  affectionately  on  the  frosty 
sparkle  of  her  charming  old  face,  which  had,  in  its 
setting  of  recovered  prosperity,  the  freshness  of  a  sunny 
winter  morning,  when  the  very  snow  gives  out  a  sug- 
gestion of  warmth. 

He  remembered  how,  on  the  evening  of  his  dismissal 
from  the  mills,  he  had  paused  on  the  threshold  of  their 
sitting-room  to  watch  her  a  moment  in  the  lamplight, 
and  had  thought  with  bitter  compunction  of  the  fresh 
wrinkle  he  was  about  to  add  to  the  lines  about  her  eyes. 
The  three  years  which  followed  had  effaced  that  wrinkle 
and  veiled  the  others  in  a  tardy  bloom  of  well-being. 
From  the  moment  of  turning  her  back  on  Westmore, 
and  establishing  herself  in  the  pretty  little  house  at 
Hanaford  which  her  son's  wife  had  placed  at  her  dis- 
posal, Mrs.  Amherst  had  shed  all  traces  of  the  difficult 
years;  and  the  fact  that  his  marriage  had  enabled  him 
to  set  free,  before  it  was  too  late,  the  pent-up  springs 
of  her  youthfulness,  sometimes  seemed  to  Amherst  the 
clearest  gain  in  his  life's  confused  total  of  profit  and 
loss.  It  was,  at  any  rate,  the  sense  of  Bessy's  share  in 
[  173] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

the  change  that  softened  his  voice  when  he  spoke  of 
her  to  his  mother. 

"Now,  then,  if  I  present  a  sufficiently  unruffled  sur- 
face, let  us  go  back  to  Mrs.  Ansell — for  I  confess  that 
her  mysterious  reasons  are  not  yet  apparent  to  me." 

Mrs.  Amherst  looked  deprecatingly  at  her  son. 
"Maria  Ansell  is  devoted  to  you  too,  John " 

"Of  course  she  is!  It's  her  role  to  be  devoted  to 
everybody — especially  to  her  enemies." 

"Her  enemies?" 

"Oh,  I  didn't  intend  any  personal  application.  But 
why  does  she  want  me  to  take  Bessy  abroad  ? " 

"She  and  Mr.  Langhope  think  that  Bessy  is  not 
looking  well." 

Amherst  paused,  and  the  frown  showed  itself  for  a 
moment.  "What  do  you  think,  mother?" 

"I  hadn't  noticed  it  myself:  Bessy  seems  to  me 
prettier  than  ever.  But  perhaps  she  has  less  colour — 
and  she  complains  of  not  sleeping.  Maria  thinks  she 
still  frets  over  the  baby." 

Amherst  made  an  impatient  gesture.  "Is  Europe 
the  only  panacea?" 

"You  should  consider,  John,  that  Bessy  is  used  to 
change  and  amusement.  I  think  you  sometimes  forget 
that  other  people  haven't  your  faculty  of  absorbing 
themselves  in  a  single  interest.  And  Maria  says  that 
the  new  doctor  at  Clifton,  whom  they  seem  to  think  so 
[174] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

clever,  is  very  anxious  that  Bessy  should  go  to  Europe 
this  summer." 

"No  doubt;  and  so  is  every  one  else:  I  mean  her 
father  and  old  Tredegar — and  your  friend  Mrs.  Ansell 
not  least." 

Mrs.  Amherst  lifted  her  bright  black  eyes  to  his. 
"Well,  then — if  they  all  think  she  needs  it " 

"Good  heavens,  if  travel  were  what  she  needed! — 
Why,  we've  never  stopped  travelling  since  we  married. 
We've  been  everywhere  on  the  globe  except  at  Hana- 
ford — this  is  her  second  visit  here  in  three  years!"  He 
rose  and  took  a  rapid  turn  across  the  deserted  verandah. 
"It's  not  because  her  health  requires  it — it's  to  get  me 
away  from  Westmore,  to  prevent  things  being  done 
there  that  ought  to  be  done!"  he  broke  out  vehemently, 
halting  again  before  his  mother. 

The  aged  pink  faded  from  Mrs.  Amherst's  face, 
but  her  eyes  retained  their  lively  glitter.  "To  pre- 
vent things  being  done?  What  a  strange  thing  to 


say 


"I  shouldn't  have  said  it  if  I  hadn't  seen  you  falling 
under  Mrs.  Ansell's  spell." 

His  mother  had  a  gesture  which  showed  from  whom 
he  had  inherited  his  impulsive  movements.  "Really, 
my  son — !"  She  folded  her  hands,  and  added  after  a 
pause  of  self -recovery:  "If  you  mean  that  I  have  ever 

attempted  to  interfere " 

[175] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"No,  no:  but  when  they  pervert  things  so  damn- 
ably  " 

"John!" 

He  dropped  into  his  chair  again,  and  pushed  the  hair 
from  his  forehead  with  a  groan. 

"Well,  then — put  it  that  they  have  as  much  right  to 
their  view  as  I  have:  I  only  want  you  to  see  what  it  is. 
Whenever  I  try  to  do  anything  at  Westmore — to  give  a 
real  start  to  the  work  that  Bessy  and  I  planned  together 
— some  pretext  is  found  to  stop  it:  to  pack  us  off  to 
the  ends  of  the  earth,  to  cry  out  against  reducing  her 
income,  to  encourage  her  in  some  new  extravagance  to 
which  the  work  at  the  mills  must  be  sacrificed!" 

Mrs.  Amherst,  growing  pale  under  this  outbreak,  as- 
sured herself  by  a  nervous  backward  glance  that  their 
privacy  was  still  uninvaded;  then  her  eyes  returned 
to  her  son's  face. 

"John — are  you  sure  you're  not  sacrificing  your  wife 
to  the  mills?" 

He  grew  pale  in  turn,  and  they  looked  at  each  other 
for  a  moment  without  speaking. 

"You  see  it  as  they  do,  then?"  he  rejoined  with  a 
discouraged  sigh. 

"I  see  it  as  any  old  woman  would,  who  had  my  ex- 
periences to  look  back  to." 

"Mother!"  he  exclaimed. 

She  smiled  composedly.  "Do  you  think  I  mean 
[176] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

that  as  a  reproach?  That's  because  men  will  never 
understand  women — least  of  all,  sons  their  mothers. 
No  real  mother  wants  to  come  first;  she  puts  her  son's 
career  ahead  of  everything.  But  it's  different  with  a 
wife — and  a  wife  as  much  in  love  as  Bessy." 

Amherst  looked  away.  "I  should  have  thought  that 
was  a  reason " 

"That  would  reconcile  her  to  being  set  aside,  to 
counting  only  second  in  your  plans?" 

"They  were  her  plans  when  we  married!" 

"Ah,  my  dear — !"  She  paused  on  that,  letting  her 
shrewd  old  glance,  and  all  the  delicate  lines  of  experi- 
ence in  her  face,  supply  what  farther  comment  the 
ineptitude  of  his  argument  invited. 

He  took  the  full  measure  of  her  meaning,  receiving  it 
in  a  baffled  silence  that  continued  as  she  rose  and  gath- 
ered her  lace  mantle  about  her,  as  if  to  signify  that 
their  confidences  could  not,  on  such  an  occasion,  be 
farther  prolonged  without  singularity.  Then  he  stood 
up  also  and  joined  her,  resting  his  hand  on  hers  while 
she  leaned  on  the  verandah  rail. 

"Poor  mother!  And  I've  kept  you  to  myself  all  this 
time,  and  spoiled  your  good  afternoon." 

"No,  dear;  I  was  a  little  tired,  and  had  slipped  away 
to  be  quiet."  She  paused,  and  then  went  on,  per- 
suasively giving  back  his  pressure:  "I  know  how  you 
feel  about  doing  your  duty,  John ;  but  now  that  things 
[  177] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

are  so  comfortably  settled,  isn't  it  a  pity  to  unsettle 
them?" 

Amhjerst  had  intended,  on  leaving  his  mother,  to  rejoin 
Bessy,  whom  he  could  still  discern,  on  the  lawn,  in  ab- 
sorbed communion  with  Miss  Brent;  but  after  what 
had  passed  it  seemed  impossible,  for  the  moment,  to  re- 
cover the  garden-party  tone,  and  he  made  his  escape 
through  the  house  while  a  trio  of  Cuban  singers,  who 
formed  the  crowning  number  of  the  entertainment, 
gathered  the  company  in  a  denser  circle  about  their 
guitars. 

As  he  walked  on  aimlessly  under  the  deep  June 
shadows  of  Maplewood  Avenue  his  mother's  last  words 
formed  an  ironical  accompaniment  to  his  thoughts. 
"Now  that  things  are  comfortably  settled — "  he  knew 
so  well  what  that  elastic  epithet  covered!  Himself,  for 
instance,  ensconced  in  the  impenetrable  prosperity  of 
his  wonderful  marriage;  herself  too  (unconsciously, 
dear  soul!),  so  happily  tucked  away  in  a  cranny  of  that 
new  and  spacious  life,  and  no  more  able  to  conceive 
why  existing  conditions  should  be  disturbed  than  the 
bird  in  the  eaves  understands  why  the  house  should  be 
torn  down.  Well — he  had  learned  at  last  what  his  ex- 
perience with  his  poor,  valiant,  puzzled  mother  might 
have  taught  him :  that  one  must  never  ask  from  women 
any  view  but  the  personal  one,  any  measure  of  conduct 
[  178] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

but  that  of  their  own  pains  and  pleasures.  She,  indeed, 
had  borne  undauntedly  enough  the  brunt  of  their 
earlier  trials;  but  that  was  merely  because,  as  she  said, 
the  mother's  instinct  bade  her  heap  all  her  private 
hopes  on  the  great  devouring  altar  of  her  son's  ambi- 
tion ;  it  was  not  because  she  had  ever,  in  the  very  least, 
understood  or  sympathized  with  his  aims. 

And  Bessy — ?  Perhaps  if  their  little  son  had  lived 
she  might  in  turn  have  obeyed  the  world-old  instinct  of 
self-effacement — but  now!  He  remembered  with  an 
intenser  self-derision  that,  not  even  in  the  first  surprise 
of  his  passion,  had  he  deluded  himself  with  the  idea 
that  Bessy  Westmore  was  an  exception  to  her  sex.  He 
had  argued  rather  that,  being  only  a  lovelier  product  of 
the  common  mould,  she  would  abound  in  the  adapta- 
bilities and  pliancies  which  the  lords  of  the  earth  have 
seen  fit  to  cultivate  in  their  companions.  She  would 
care  for  his  aims  because  they  were  his.  During  their 
precipitate  wooing,  and  through  the  first  brief  months 
of  marriage,  this  profound  and  original  theory  had  been 
gratifyingly  confirmed;  then  its  perfect  surface  had 
begun  to  show  a  flaw.  Amherst  had  always  conven- 
iently supposed  that  the  poet's  line  summed  up  the  good 
woman's  rule  of  ethics:  He  for  God  only,  she  for  God 
in  him.  It  was  for  the  god  in  him,  surely,  that  she  had 
loved  him:  for  that  first  glimpse  of  an  "ampler  ether, 
a  diviner  air"  that  he  had  brought  into  her  cramped 
[  179] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

and  curtained  life.  He  could  never,  now,  evoke  that 
earlier  delusion  without  feeling  on  its  still-tender  sur- 
face the  keen  edge  of  Mrs.  Ansell's  smile.  She,  no 
doubt,  could  have  told  him  at  any  time  why  Bessy  had 
married  him:  it  was  for  his  beaux  yeux,  as  Mrs.  Ansell 
would  have  put  it — because  he  was  young,  handsome, 
persecuted,  an  ardent  lover  if  not  a  subtle  one — because 
Bessy  had  met  him  at  the  fatal  moment,  because  her 
family  had  opposed  the  marriage — because,  in  brief,  the 
gods,  that  day,  may  have  been  a  little  short  of  amuse- 
ment. Well,  they  were  having  their  laugh  out  now — 
there  were  moments  when  high  heaven  seemed  to  ring 
with  it.  .  . 

With  these  thoughts  at  his  heels  Amherst  strode  on, 
overtaken  now  and  again  by  the  wheels  of  departing 
guests  from  the  garden-party,  and  knowing,  as  they 
passed  him,  what  was  in  their  minds — envy  of  his  suc- 
cess, admiration  of  his  cleverness  in  achieving  it,  and  a 
little  half-contemptuous  pity  for  his  wife,  who,  with  her 
wealth  and  looks,  might  have  done  so  much  better. 
Certainly,  if  the  case  could  have  been  put  to  Hanaford 
— the  Hanaford  of  the  Gaines  garden-party — it  would 
have  sided  with  Bessy  to  a  voice.  And  how  much  jus- 
tice was  there  in  what  he  felt  would  have  been  the  unani- 
mous verdict  of  her  class  ?  Was  his  mother  right  in 
hinting  that  he  was  sacrificing  Bessy  to  the  mills  ?  But 
the  mills  were  Bessy — at  least  he  had  thought  so  when 
[  180] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

he  married  her!  They  were  her  particular  form  of 
contact  with  life,  the  expression  of  her  relation  to  her 
fellow-men,  her  pretext,  her  opportunity — unless  they 
were  merely  a  vast  purse  in  which  to  plunge  for  her  pin- 
money!  He  had  fancied  it  would  rest  with  him  to  de- 
termine from  which  of  these  stand-points  she  should 
view  Westmore;  and  at  the  outset  she  had  enthusiastic- 
ally viewed  it  from  his.  In  her  eager  adoption  of  his 
ideas  she  had  made  a  pet  of  the  mills,  organizing  the 
Mothers'  Club,  laying  out  a  recreation-ground  on  the 
Hopewood  property,  and  playing  with  pretty  plans  in 
water-colour  for  the  Emergency  Hospital  and  the  build- 
ing which  was  to  contain  the  night-schools,  library  and 
gymnasium;  but  even  these  minor  projects — which  he 
had  urged  her  to  take  up  as  a  means  of  learning  their 
essential  dependence  on  his  larger  scheme — were  soon 
to  be  set  aside  by  obstacles  of  a  material  order.  Bessy 
always  wanted  money — not  a  great  deal,  but,  as  she 
reasonably  put  it,  "enough" — and  who  was  to  blame  if 
her  father  and  Mr.  Tredegar,  each  in  his  different  cap- 
acity, felt  obliged  to  point  out  that  every  philanthropic 
outlay  at  Westmore  must  entail  a  corresponding  reduc- 
tion in  her  income?  Perhaps  if  she  could  have  been 
oftener  at  Hanaford  these  arguments  would  have  been 
counteracted,  for  she  was  tender-hearted,  and  prompt 
to  relieve  such  suffering  as  she  saw  about  her;  but  her 
imagination  was  not  active,  and  it  was  easy  for  her  to 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

forget  painful  sights  when  they  were  not  under  her  eye. 
This  was  perhaps — half -consciously — one  of  the  reasons 
why  she  avoided  Hanaford;  why,  as  Amherst  exclaimed, 
they  had  been  everywhere  since  their  marriage  but  to 
the  place  where  their  obligations  called  them.  There 
had,  at  any  rate,  always  been  some  good  excuse  for  not 
returning  there,  and  consequently  for  postponing  the 
work  of  improvement  which,  it  was  generally  felt,  her 
husband  could  not  fitly  begin  till  she  had  returned  and 
gone  over  the  ground  with  him.  After  their  marriage, 
and  especially  in  view  of  the  comment  excited  by  that 
romantic  incident,  it  was  impossible  not  to  yield  to  her 
wish  that  they  should  go  abroad  for  a  few  months; 
then,  before  her  confinement,  the  doctors  had  exacted 
that  she  should  be  spared  all  fatigue  and  worry;  and 
after  the  baby's  death  Amherst  had  felt  with  her  too 
tenderly  to  venture  an  immediate  return  to  unwelcome 
questions. 

For  by  this  time  it  had  become  clear  to  him  that  such 
questions  were,  and  always  would  be,  unwelcome  to 
her.  As  the  easiest  means  of  escaping  them,  she  had 
once  more  dismissed  the  whole  problem  to  the  vague 
and  tiresome  sphere  of  "  business,"  whence  he  had  suc- 
ceeded in  detaching  it  for  a  moment  in  the  early  days  of 
their  union.  Her  first  husband — poor  unappreciated 
Westmore! — had  always  spared  her  the  boredom  of 
"business,"  and  Halford  Gaines  and  Mr.  Tredegar 
[  182] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

were  ready  to  show  her  the  same  consideration;  it  was 
part  of  the  modern  code  of  chivalry  that  lovely  woman 
should  not  be  bothered  about  ways  and  means.  But 
Bessy  was  too  much  the  wife — and  the  wife  in  love — to 
consent  that  her  husband's  views  on  the  management 
of  the  mills  should  be  totally  disregarded.  Precisely 
because  her  advisers  looked  unfavourably  on  his  in- 
tervention, she  felt  bound — if  only  in  defense  of  her 
illusions — to  maintain  and  emphasize  it.  The  mills 
were,  in  fact,  the  official  "platform"  on  which  she  had 
married:  Amherst's  devoted  role  at  Westmore  had  jus- 
tified the  unconventionality  of  the  step.  And  so  she 
was  committed — the  more  helplessly  for  her  dense  mis- 
intelligence  of  both  sides  of  the  question — to  the  policy 
of  conciliating  the  opposing  influences  which  had  so 
uncomfortably  chosen  to  fight  out  their  case  on  the 
field  of  her  poor  little  existence:  theoretically  siding 
with  her  husband,  but  surreptitiously,  as  he  well  knew, 
giving  aid  and  comfort  to  the  enemy,  who  were  really 
defending  her  own  cause. 

All  this  Amherst  saw  with  that  cruel  insight  which 
had  replaced  his  former  blindness.  He  was,  in  truth, 
more  ashamed  of  the  insight  than  of  the  blindness:  it 
seemed  to  him  horribly  cold-blooded  to  be  thus  analyz- 
ing, after  two  years  of  marriage,  the  source  of  his  wife's 
inconsistencies.  And,  partly  for  this  reason,  he  had 
put  off  from  month  to  month  the  final  question  of  the 
[  183] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

future  management  of  the  mills,  and  of  the  radical 
changes  to  be  made  there  if  his  system  were  to  prevail. 
But  the  time  had  come  when,  if  Bessy  had  to  turn  to 
Westmore  for  the  justification  of  her  marriage,  he  had 
even  more  need  of  calling  upon  it  for  the  same  service. 
He  had  not,  assuredly,  married  her  because  of  West- 
more;  but  he  would  scarcely  have  contemplated  mar- 
riage with  a  rich  woman  unless  the  source  of  her  wealth 
had  offered  him  some  such  opportunity  as  Westmore 
presented.  His  special  training,  and  the  natural  bent 
of  his  mind,  qualified  him,  in  what  had  once  seemed  a 
predestined  manner,  to  help  Bessy  to  use  her  power 
nobly,  for  her  own  uplifting  as  well  as  for  that  of  West- 
more;  and  so  the  mills  became,  incongruously  enough, 
the  plank  of  safety  to  which  both  clung  in  their  sense 
of  impending  disaster. 

It  was  not  that  Amherst  feared  the  temptation  to 
idleness  if  this  outlet  for  his  activity  were  cut  off.  He 
had  long  since  found  that  the  luxury  with  which  his 
wife  surrounded  him  merely  quickened  his  natural  bent 
for  hard  work  and  hard  fare.  He  recalled  with  a  touch 
of  bitterness  how  he  had  once  regretted  having  sepa- 
rated himself  from  his  mother's  class,  and  how  seductive 
for  a  moment,  to  both  mind  and  senses,  that  other  life 
had  apj>eared.  Well — he  knew  it  now,  and  it  had 
neither  charm  nor  peril  for  him.  Capua  must  have  been 
a  dull  place  to  one  who  had  once  drunk  the  joy  of 
[  184  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

battle.  What  he  dreaded  was  not  that  he  should  learn 
to  love  the  life  of  ease,  but  that  he  should  grow  to  loathe 
it  uncontrollably,  as  the  symbol  of  his  mental  and 
spiritual  bondage.  And  Westmore  was  his  safety-valve, 
his  refuge — if  he  were  cut  off  from  Westmore  what  re- 
mained to  him?  It  was  not  only  the  work  he  had 
found  to  his  hand,  but  the  one  work  for  which  his  hand 
was  fitted.  It  was  his  life  that  he  was  fighting  for  in 
insisting  that  now  at  last,  before  the  close  of  this  long- 
deferred  visit  to  Hanaford,  the  question  of  the  mills 
should  be  faced  and  settled.  He  had  made  that  clear 
to  Bessy,  in  a  scene  he  still  shrank  from  recalling;  for  it 
was  of  the  essence  of  his  somewhat  unbending  integrity 
that  he  would  not  trick  her  into  a  confused  surrender  to 
the  personal  influence  he  still  possessed  over  her,  but 
must  seek  to  convince  her  by  the  tedious  process  of 
argument  and  exposition,  against  which  she  knew  no 
defense  but  tears  and  petulance.  But  he  had,  at  any 
rate,  gained  her  consent  to  his  setting  forth  his  views  at 
the  meeting  of  directors  the  next  morning;  and  mean- 
while he  had  meant  to  be  extraordinarily  patient  and 
reasonable  with  her,  till  the  hint  of  Mrs.  Ansell's  strata- 
gem produced  in  him  a  fresh  reaction  of  distrust. 


[  185] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 
XII 

THAT  evening  when  dinner  ended,  Mrs.  Ansell,  with 
a  glance  through  the  tall  dining-room  windows, 
had  suggested  to  Bessy  that  it  would  be  pleasanter  to 
take  coffee  on  the  verandah;  but  Amherst  detained  his 
wife  with  a  glance. 

"I  should  like  Bessy  to  stay,"  he  said. 

The  dining-room  being  on  the  cool  side  the  house, 
with  a  refreshing  outlook  on  the  garden,  the  men  pre- 
ferred to  smoke  there  rather  than  in  the  stuffily-draped 
Oriental  apartment  destined  to  such  rites;  and  Bessy 
Amherst,  with  a  faint  sigh,  sank  back  into  her  seat, 
while  Mrs.  Ansell  drifted  out  through  one  of  the  open 
windows. 

The  men  surrounding  Richard  Westmore's  table 
were  the  same  who  nearly  three  years  earlier  had 
gathered  in  his  house  for  the  same  purpose:  the  discus- 
sion of  conditions  at  the  mills.  The  only  perceptible 
change  in  the  relation  to  each  other  of  the  persons  com- 
posing this  group  was  that  John  Amherst  was  now  the 
host  of  the  other  two,  instead  of  being  a  subordinate 
called  in  for  cross-examination;  but  he  was  so  indiffer- 
ent, or  at  least  so  heedless,  a  host — so  forgetful,  for 
instance,  of  Mr.  Tredegar's  preference  for  a  "light" 
cigar,  and  of  Mr.  Langhope's  feelings  on  the  duty  of 
making  the  Westmore  madeira  circulate  with  the  sun — 
[  186] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

that  the  change  was  manifest  only  in  his  evening-dress, 
and  in  the  fact  of  his  sitting  at  the  foot  of  the  table. 

If  Amherst  was  conscious  of  the  contrast  thus  im- 
plied, it  was  only  as  a  restriction  on  his  freedom.  As 
far  as  the  welfare  of  Westmore  was  concerned  he  would 
rather  have  stood  before  his  companions  as  the  assistant 
manager  of  the  mills  than  as  the  husband  of  their 
owner;  and  it  seemed  to  him,  as  he  looked  back,  that 
he  had  done  very  little  with  the  opportunity  which 
looked  so  great  in  the  light  of  his  present  restrictions. 
What  he  had  done  with  it — the  use  to  which,  as  un- 
friendly critics  might  insinuate,  he  had  so  adroitly  put 
it — had  landed  him,  ironically  enough,  in  the  ugly  im- 
passe of  a  situation  from  which  no  issue  seemed  possible 
without  some  wasteful  sacrifice  of  feeling. 

His  wife's  feelings,  for  example,  were  already  reveal- 
ing themselves  in  an  impatient  play  of  her  fan  that 
made  her  father  presently  lean  forward  to  suggest: 
"If  we  men  are  to  talk  shop,  is  it  necessary  to  keep 
Bessy  in  this  hot  room?" 

Amherst  rose  and  opened  the  window  behind  his  wife's 
chair. 

"There's  a  breeze  from  the  west — the  room  will  be 
cooler  now,"  he  said,  returning  to  his  seat. 

"Oh,  I  don't  mind — "  Bessy  murmured,  in  a  tone  in- 
tended to  give  her  companions  the  full  measure  of  what 
she  was  being  called  on  to  endure. 
[  187  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Mr.  Tredegar  coughed  slightly.  "  May  I  trouble  you 
for  that  other  box  of  cigars,  Amherst?  No,  not  the 
Cabanas."  Bessy  rose  and  handed  him  the  box  on 
which  his  glance  significantly  rested.  "Ah,  thank  you, 
my  dear.  I  was  about  to  ask,"  he  continued,  looking 
about  for  the  cigar-lighter,  which  flamed  unheeded  at 
Amherst's  elbow,  "what  special  purpose  will  be  served 
by  a  preliminary  review  of  the  questions  to  be  discussed 
tomorrow." 

"Ah — exactly,"  murmured  Mr.  Langhope.  "The 
madeira,  my  dear  John?  No — ah — please — to  the  left!" 

Amherst  impatiently  reversed  the  direction  in  which 
he  had  set  the  precious  vessel  moving,  and  turned  to 
Mr.  Tredegar,  who  was  conspicuously  lighting  his  cigar 
with  a  match  extracted  from  his  waist-coat  pocket. 

"The  purpose  is  to  define  my  position  in  the  matter; 
and  I  prefer  that  Bessy  should  do  this  with  your  help 
rather  than  with  mine." 

Mr.  Tredegar  surveyed  his  cigar  through  drooping 
lids,  as  though  the  question  propounded  by  Amherst 
were  perched  on  its  tip. 

"Is  not  your  position  naturally  involved  in  and  de- 
fined by  hers  ?  You  will  excuse  my  saying  that — tech- 
nically speaking,  of  course — I  cannot  distinctly  con- 
ceive of  it  as  having  any  separate  existence." 

Mr.  Tredegar  spoke  with  the  deliberate  mildness 
that  was  regarded  as  his  most  effective  weapon  at  the 
[  188] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

bar,  since  it  was  likely  to  abash  those  who  were  too 
intelligent  to  be  propitiated  by  it. 

"Certainly  it  is  involved  in  hers,"  Amherst  agreed; 
"  but  how  far  that  defines  it  is  just  what  I  have  waited 
till  now  to  find  out." 

Bessy  at  this  point  recalled  her  presence  by  a  restless 
turn  of  her  graceful  person,  and  her  father,  with  an 
affectionate  glance  at  her,  interposed  amicably:  "But 
surely — according  to  old-fashioned  ideas — it  implies 
identity  of  interests  ?  " 

"Yes;   but  whose  interests?"  Amherst  asked. 

"Why — your  wife's,  man!     She  owns  the  mills." 

Amherst  hesitated.  "I  would  rather  talk  of  my 
wife's  interest  in  the  mills  than  of  her  interests  there; 
but  we'll  keep  to  the  plural  if  you  prefer  it.  Personally, 
I  believe  the  terms  should  be  interchangeable  in  the 
conduct  of  such  a  business." 

"Ah — I'm  glad  tp  hear  that,"  said  Mr.  Tredegar 
quickly,  "since  it's  precisely  the  view  we  all  take." 

Amherst's  colour  rose.  "  Definitions  are  ambiguous," 
he  said.  "Before  you  adopt  mine,  perhaps  I  had  better 
develop  it  a  little  farther.  What  I  mean  is,  that  Bessy's 
interests  in  Westmore  should  be  regulated  by  her  inter- 
est in  it — in  its  welfare  as  a  social  body,  aside  from 
its  success  as  a  commercial  enterprise.  If  we  agree  on 
this  definition,  we  are  at  one  as  to  the  other:  namely 
that  my  relation  to  the  matter  is  defined  by  hers." 
[  189] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

He  paused  a  moment,  as  if  to  give  his  wife  time  to 
contribute  some  sign  of  assent  and  encouragement;  but 
she  maintained  a  puzzled  silence  and  he  went  on: 
"There  is  nothing  new  in  this.  I  have  tried  to  make 
Bessy  understand  from  the  beginning  what  obligations 
I  thought  the  ownership  of  Westmore  entailed,  and 
how  I  hoped  to  help  her  fulfill  them;  but  ever  since 
our  marriage  all  definite  discussion  of  the  subject  has 
been  put  off  for  one  cause  or  another,  and  that  is  my 
reason  for  urging  that  it  should  be  brought  up  at  the 
directors'  meeting  tomorrow." 

There  was  another  pause,  during  which  Bessy  glanced 
tentatively  at  Mr.  Tredegar,  and  then  said,  with  a 
lovely  rise  of  colour:  "But,  John,  I  sometimes  think 
you  forget  how  much  has  been  done  at  Westmore — the 
Mothers'  Club,  and  the  play-ground,  and  all — in  the 
way  of  carrying  out  your  ideas." 

Mr.  Tredegar  discreetly  dropped  his  glance  to  his 
cigar,  and  Mr.  Langhope  sounded  an  irrepressible  note 
of  approval  and  encouragement. 

Amherst  smiled.  "No,  I  have  not  forgotten;  and  I 
am  grateful  to  you  for  giving  my  ideas  a  trial.  But 
what  has  been  done  hitherto  is  purely  superficial." 
Bessy's  eyes  clouded,  and  he  added  hastily:  "Don't 
think  I  undervalue  it  for  that  reason — heaven  knows 
the  surface  of  life  needs  improving!  But  it's  like  pick- 
ing flowers  and  sticking  them  in  the  ground  to  make  a 
[  190] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

garden — unless  you  transplant  the  flower  with  its  roots, 
and  prepare  the  soil  to  receive  it,  your  garden  will  be 
faded  tomorrow.  No  radical  changes  have  yet  been 
made  at  Westmore;  and  it  is  of  radical  changes  that  I 
want  to  speak." 

Bessy's  look  grew  more  pained,  and  Mr.  Langhope 
exclaimed  with  unwonted  irascibility:  "Upon  my  soul, 
Amherst,  the  tone  you  take  about  what  your  wife  has 
done  doesn't  strike  me  as  the  likeliest  way  of  encourag- 
ing her  to  do  more'" 

"I  don't  want  to  encourage  her  to  do  more  on  such  a 
basis — the  sooner  she  sees  the  futility  of  it  the  better  for 
Westmore!" 

"  The  futility—  ? "  Bessy  broke  out,  with  a  flutter  of 
tears  in  her  voice;  but  before  her  father  could  inter- 
vene Mr.  Tredegar  had  raised  his  hand  with  the  gesture 
of  one  accustomed  to  wield  the  gavel. 

"  My  dear  child,  I  see  Amherst's  point,  and  it  is  best, 
as  he  says,  that  you  should  see  it  too.  What  he  desires, 
as  I  understand  it,  is  the  complete  reconstruction  of  the 
present  state  of  things  at  Westmore;  and  he  is  right  in 
saying  that  all  your  good  works  there — night-schools, 
and  nursery,  and  so  forth — leave  that  issue  untouched." 

A  smile  quivered  under  Mr.  Langhope's  moustache. 

He  and  Amherst  both  knew  that  Mr.  Tredegar's  feint 

of  recognizing  the  justice  of  his  adversary's  claim  was 

merely  the  first  step  to  annihilating  it;  but  Bessy  could 

[191] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

never  be  made  to  understand  this,  and  always  felt  her- 
self deserted  and  betrayed  when  any  side  but  her  own 
was  given  a  hearing. 

"I'm  sorry  if  all  I  have  tried  to  do  at  Westmore  is 
useless — but  I  suppose  I  shall  never  understand  busi- 
ness," she  murmured,  vainly  seeking  consolation  in  her 
father's  eye. 

"This  is  not  business,"  Amherst  broke  in.  "It's 
the  question  of  your  personal  relation  to  the  people 
there — the  last  thing  that  business  considers." 

Mr.  Langhope  uttered  an  impatient  exclamation. 
"I  wish  to  heaven  the  owner  of  the  mills  had  made  it 
clear  just  what  that  relation  was  to  be!" 

"I  think  he  did,  sir,"  Amherst  answered  steadily, 
"in  leaving  his  wife  the  unrestricted  control  of  the 
property." 

He  had  reddened  under  Mr.  Langhope's  thrust,  but 
his  voice  betrayed  no  irritation,  and  Bessy  rewarded 
him  with  an  unexpected  beam  of  sympathy:  she  was 
always  up  in  arms  at  the  least  sign  of  his  being  treated 
as  an  intruder. 

"I  am  sure,  papa," she  said, a  little  tremulously,  "that 
poor  Richard,  though  he  knew  I  was  not  clever,  felt  he 
could  trust  me  to  take  the  best  advice " 

"Ah,  that's  all  we  ask  of  you,  my  child!"  her  father 
sighed,  while  Mr.  Tredegar  drily  interposed:  "We  are 
merely  losing  time  by  this  digression.  Let  me  suggest 
[  192  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

that  Amherst  should  give  us  an  idea  of  the  changes  he 
wishes  to  make  at  Westmore." 

Amherst,  as  he  turned  to  answer,  remembered  with 
what  ardent  faith  in  his  powers  of  persuasion  he  had 
responded  to  the  same  appeal  three  years  earlier.  He 
had  thought  then  that  all  his  cause  needed  was  a  hear- 
ing; now  he  knew  that  the  practical  man's  readiness  to 
let  the  idealist  talk  corresponds  with  the  busy  parent's 
permission  to  destructive  infancy  to  "run  out  and  play." 
They  would  let  him  state  his  case  to  the  four  corners  of 
the  earth — if  only  he  did  not  expect  them  to  act  on  it! 
It  was  their  policy  to  let  him  exhaust  himself  in  argu- 
ment and  exhortation,  to  listen  to  him  so  politely  and 
patiently  that  if  he  failed  to  enforce  his  ideas  it  should 
not  be  for  lack  of  opportunity  to  expound  them.  .  . 
And  the  alternative  struck  him  as  hardly  less  to  be 
feared.  Supposing  that  the  incredible  happened,  that 
his  reasons  prevailed  with,  his  wife,  and,  through  her, 
with  the  others — at  what  cost  would  the  victory  be  won  ? 
Would  Bessy  ever  forgive  him  for  winning  it?  And 
what  would  his  situation  be,  if  it  left  him  in  control  of 
Westmore  but  estranged  from  his  wife  ? 

He  recalled  suddenly  a  phrase  he  had  used  that  after- 
noon to  the  dark-eyed  girl  at  the  garden-party:  "What 
risks  we  run  when  we  scramble  into  the  chariot  of  the 
gods!"  And  at  the  same  instant  he  heard  her  retort, 
and  saw  her  fine  gesture  of  defiance.  How  could  he 
[  193  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

ever  have  doubted  that  the  thing  was  worth  doing  at 
whatever  cost?  Something  in  him — some  secret  lurk- 
ing element  of  weakness  and  evasion — shrank  out  of 
sight  in  the  light  of  her  question:  "Do  you  act  on 
that?"  and  the  "God  forbid!"  he  had  instantly  flashed 
back  to  her.  He  turned  to  Mr.  Tredegar  with  his 
answer. 

Amherst  knew  that  any  large  theoretical  exposition 
of  the  case  would  be  as  much  wasted  on  the  two  men 
as  on  his  wife.  To  gain  his  point  he  must  take  only 
one  step  at  a  time,  and  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  first 
thing  needed  at  Westmore  was  that  the  hands  should 
work  and  live  under  healthier  conditions.  To  attain 
this,  two  important  changes  were  necessary:  the  floor- 
space  of  the  mills  must  be  enlarged,  and  the  company 
must  cease  to  rent  out  tenements,  and  give  the  opera- 
tives the  opportunity  to  buy  land  for  themselves.  Both 
these  changes  involved  the  upheaval  of  the  existing 
order.  Whenever  the  Westmore  mills  had  been  en- 
larged, it  had  been  for  the  sole  purpose  of  increasing 
the  revenues  of  the  company;  and  now  Amherst  asked 
that  these  revenues  should  be  materially  and  perma- 
nently reduced.  As  to  the  suppression  of  the  company 
tenement,  such  a  measure  struck  at  the  roots  of  the 
baneful  paternalism  which  was  choking  out  every  germ 
of  initiative  in  the  workman.  Once  the  operatives  had 
room  to  work  in,  and  the  hope  of  homes  of  their  own  to 
[  194] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

go  to  when  work  was  over,  Amherst  was  willing  to 
trust  to  time  for  the  satisfaction  of  their  other  needs. 
He  believed  that  a  sounder  understanding  of  these  needs 
would  develop  on  both  sides  the  moment  the  employers 
proved  their  good  faith  by  the  deliberate  and  permanent 
sacrifice  of  excessive  gain  to  the  well-being  of  the  em- 
ployed; and  once  the  two  had  learned  to  regard  each 
other  not  as  antagonists  but  as  collaborators,  a  long 
step  would  have  been  taken  toward  a  readjustment  of 
the  whole  industrial  relation.  In  regard  to  general  and 
distant  results,  Amherst  tried  not  to  be  too  sanguine, 
even  in  his  own  thoughts.  His  aim  was  to  remedy 
the  abuse  nearest  at  hand,  in  the  hope  of  thus  getting 
gradually  closer  to  the  central  evil;  and,  had  his  action 
been  unhampered,  he  would  still  have  preferred  the 
longer  and  more  circuitous  path  of  practical  experiment 
to  the  sweeping  adoption  of  a  new  industrial  system. 

But  his  demands,  moderate  as  they  were,  assumed  in 
his  hearers  the  consciousness  of  a  moral  claim  superior 
to  the  obligation  of  making  one's  business  "pay";  and 
it  was  the  futility  of  this  assumption  that  chilled  the 
arguments  on  his  lips,  since  in  the  orthodox  creed  of  the 
business  world  it  was  a  weakness  and  not  a  strength  to 
be  content  with  five  per  cent  where  ten  was  obtainable. 
Business  was  one  thing,  philanthropy  another;  and  the 
enthusiasts  who  tried  combining  them  were  usually  re- 
duced, after  a  brief  flight,  to  paying  fifty  cents  on  the 
[  195  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

dollar,  and  handing  over  their  stock  to  a  promoter  pre- 
sumably unhampered  by  humanitarian  ideals. 

Amherst  knew  that  this  was  the  answer  with  which 
his  plea  would  be  met;  knew,  moreover,  that  the  plea 
was  given  a  hearing  simply  because  his  judges  deemed 
it  so  pitiably  easy  to  refute.  But  the  knowledge,  once 
he  had  begun  to  speak,  fanned  his  argument  to  a  white 
heat  of  pleading,  since,  with  failure  so  plainly  ahead, 
small  concessions  and  compromises  were  not  worth  mak- 
ing. Reason  would  be  wasted  on  all;  but  eloquence 
might  at  least  prevail  with  Bessy.  .  . 

When,  late  that  night,  he  went  upstairs  after  long 
pacings  of  the  garden,  he  was  surprised  to  see  a  light 
in  her  room.  She  was  not  given  to  midnight  study, 
and  fearing  that  she  might  be  ill  he  knocked  at  her 
door.  There  was  no  answer,  and  after  a  short  pause 
he  turned  the  handle  and  entered. 

In  the  great  canopied  Westmore  couch,  her  arms 
flung  upward  and  her  hands  clasped  beneath  her  head, 
she  lay  staring  fretfully  at  the  globe  of  electric  light 
which  hung  from  the  centre  of  the  embossed  and  gilded 
ceiling.  Seen  thus,  with  the  soft  curves  of  throat  and 
arms  revealed,  and  her  face  childishly  set  in  a  cloud  of 
loosened  hair,  she  looked  no  older  than  Cicely — and, 
like  Cicely,  inaccessible  to  grown-up  arguments  and  the 
stronger  logic  of  experience. 

[  196] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

It  was  a  trick  of  hers,  in  such  moods,  to  ignore  any 
attempt  to  attract  her  notice;  and  Amherst  was  pre- 
pared for  her  remaining  motionless  as  he  paused  on  the 
threshold  and  then  advanced  toward  the  middle  of  the 
room.  There  had  been  a  time  when  he  would  have 
been  exasperated  by  her  pretense  of  not  seeing  him, 
but  a  deep  weariness  of  spirit  now  dulled  him  to  these 
surface  pricks. 

"I  was  afraid  you  were  not  well  when  I  saw  the  light 
burning,"  he  began. 

"Thank  you — I  am  quite  well,"  she  answered  in  a 
colourless  voice,  without  turning  her  head. 

"Shall  I  put  it  out,  then  ?  You  can't  sleep  with  such 
a  glare  in  your  eyes." 

"I  should  not  sleep  at  any  rate;  and  I  hate  to  lie 
awake  in  the  dark." 

"Why  shouldn't  you  sleep?"  He  moved  nearer, 
looking  down  compassionately  on  her  perturbed  face 
and  struggling  lips. 

She  lay  silent  a  moment;  then  she  faltered  out: 
"B — because  I'm  so  unhappy!" 

The  pretense  of  indifference  was  swept  away  by  a 
gush  of  childish  sobs  as  she  flung  over  on  her  side  and 
buried  her  face  in  the  embroidered  pillows. 

Amherst,  bending  down,  laid  a  quieting  hand  on  her 
shoulder.  Bessy " 

She  sobbed  on. 

[  197] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

He  seated  himself  silently  in  the  arm-chair  beside  the 
bed,  and  kept  his  soothing  hold  on  her  shoulder. 
The  time  had  come  when  he  went  through  all  these 
accustomed  acts  of  pacification  as  mechanically  as  a 
nurse  soothing  a  fretful  child.  And  once  he  had  thought 
her  weeping  eloquent!  He  looked  about  him  at  the 
spacious  room,  with  its  heavy  hangings  of  damask  and 
the  thick  velvet  carpet  which  stifled  his  steps.  Every- 
where were  the  graceful  tokens  of  her  presence — the 
vast  lace-draped  toilet-table  strewn  with  silver  and 
crystal,  the  embroidered  muslin  cushions  heaped  on 
the  lounge,  the  little  rose-lined  slippers  she  had  just 
put  off,  the  lace  wrapper,  with  a  scent  of  violets  in 
its  folds,  which  he  had  pushed  aside  when  he  sat 
down  beside  her;  and  he  remembered  how  full  of  a 
mysterious  and  intimate  charm  these  things  had  once 
appeared  to  him.  It  was  characteristic  that  the  re- 
membrance made  him  more  patient  with  her  now. 
Perhaps,  after  all,  it  was  his  failure  that  she  was  crying 
over.  .  . 

"Don't  be  unhappy.  You  decided  as  seemed  best 
to  you,"  he  said. 

She  pressed  her  handkerchief  against  her  lips,  still 
keeping  her  head  averted.  "But  I  hate  all  these  argu- 
ments and  disputes.  Why  should  you  unsettle  every- 
thing ?  "  she  murmured. 

His  mother's  words!     Involuntairly  he  removed  his 

[  I**] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

hand  from  her  shoulder,  though  he  still  remained  seated 
by  the  bed. 

"You  are  right.  I  see  the  uselessness  of  it,"  he  as- 
sented, with  an  uncontrollable  note  of  irony. 

She  turned  her  head  at  the  tone,  and  fixed  her  plain- 
tive brimming  eyes  on  him.  "You  are  angry  with 


me! 

"Was  that  troubling  you?"  He  leaned  forward 
again,  with  compassion  in  his  face.  Sancta  simplicitas! 
was  the  thought  within  him. 

"I  am  not  angry,"  he  went  on;  "be  reasonable  and 
try  to  sleep." 

She  started  upright,  the  light  masses  of  her  hair 
floating  about  her  like  silken  sea-weed  lifted  on  an  in- 
visible tide.  "Don't  talk  like  that!  I  can't  endure  to 
be  humoured  like  a  baby.  I  am  unhappy  because  I 
can't  see  why  all  these  wretched  questions  should  be 
dragged  into  our  life.  I  hate  to  have  you  always  dis- 
agreeing with  Mr.  Tredegar,  who  is  so  clever  and  has 
so  much  experience;  and  yet  I  hate  to  see  you  give  way 
to  him,  because  that  makes  it  appear  as  if.  .  .  as 
if.  .  ." 

"He  didn't  care  a  straw  for  my  ideas?"  Amherst 
smiled.  "Well,  he  doesn't — and  I  never  dreamed  of 
making  him.  So  don't  worry  about  that  either." 

"You  never  dreamed  of  making  him  care  for  your 
ideas  ?  But  then  why  do  you " 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Why  do  I  go  on  setting  them  forth  at  such  great 
length?"  Amherst  smiled  again  "To  convince  you 
— that's  my  only  ambition." 

She  stared  at  him,  shaking  her  head  back  to  toss  a 
loose  lock  from  her  puzzled  eyes.  A  tear  still  shone  on 
her  lashes,  but  with  the  motion  it  fell  and  trembled 
down  her  cheek. 

"To  convince  me?  But  you  know  I  am  so  ignorant 
of  such  things." 

"Most  women  are." 

"I  never  pretended  to  understand  anything  about — 
economics,  or  whatever  you  call  it." 

"No." 

"Then  how " 

He  turned  and  looked  at  her  gently.  "  I  thought  you 
might  have  begun  to  understand  something  about  me." 

"About  you?"  The  colour  flowered  softly  under 
her  clear  skin. 

"About  what  my  ideas  on  such  subjects  were  likely 
to  be  worth — judging  from  what  you  know  of  me  in 
other  respects."  He  paused  and  glanced  away  from 
her.  "Well,"  he  concluded  deliberately,  "I  suppose 
I've  had  my  answer  tonight." 

"Oh,  John !" 

He  rose  and  wandered  across  the  room,  pausing  a 
moment  to  finger  absently  the  trinkets  on  the  dressing- 
table.  The  act  recalled  with  a  curious  vividness  cer- 
[  200  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

tain  dulled  sensastions  of  their  first  days  together,  when 
to  handle  and  examine  these  frail  little  accessories  of 
her  toilet  had  been  part  of  the  wonder  and  amuse- 
ment of  his  new  existence.  He  could  still  hear  her 
laugh  as  she  leaned  over  him,  watching  his  mystified 
look  in  the  glass,  till  their  reflected  eyes  met  there  and 
drew  down  her  lips  to  his.  He  laid  down  the  fragrant 
powder-puff  he  had  been  turning  slowly  between  his 
fingers,  and  moved  back  toward  the  bed.  In  the  in- 
terval he  had  reached  a  decision. 

"Well— isn't  it  natural  that  I  should  think  so?"  he 
began  again,  as  he  stood  beside  her.  "When  we  mar- 
ried I  never  expected  you  to  care  or  know  much  about 
economics.  It  isn't  a  quality  a  man  usually  chooses  his 
wife  for.  But  I  had  a  fancy — perhaps  it  shows  my 
conceit — that  when  we  had  lived  together  a  year  or 
two,  and  you'd  found  out  what  kind  of  a  fellow  I  was 
in  other  ways — ways  any  woman  can  judge  of — I  had  a 
fancy  that  you  might  take  my  opinions  on  faith  when  it 
came  to  my  own  special  business — the  thing  I'm  gen- 
erally supposed  to  know  about." 

He  knew  that  he  was  touching  a  sensitive  chord,  for 
Bessy  had  to  the  full  her  sex's  pride  of  possessorship. 
He  was  human  and  faulty  till  others  criticized  him — 
then  he  became  a  god.  But  in  this  case  a  conflicting 
influence  restrained  her  from  complete  response  to  his 
appeal. 

[201] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I  do  feel  sure  you  know — about  the  treatment  of  the 
hands  and  all  that;  but  you  said  yourself  once — the 
first  time  we  ever  talked  about  Westmore — that  the 
business  part  was  different " 

Here  it  was  again,  the  ancient  ineradicable  belief  in 
the  separable  body  and  soul!  Even  an  industrial  or- 
ganization was  supposed  to  be  subject  to  the  old  theo- 
logical distinction,  and  Bessy  was  ready  to  co-operate 
with  her  husband  in  the  emancipation  of  Westmore's 
spiritual  part  if  only  its  body  remained  under  the  law. 

Amherst  controlled  his  impatience,  as  it  was  always 
easy  for  him  to  do  when  he  had  fixed  on  a  definite  line 
of  conduct. 

"It  was  my  situation  that  was  different;  not  what 
you  call  the  business  part.  That  is  inextricably  bound 
up  with  the  treatment  of  the  hands.  If  I  am  to  have 
anything  to  do  with  the  mills  now  I  can  deal  with  them 
only  as  your  representative;  and  as  such  I  am  bound 
to  take  in  the  whole  question." 

Bessy's  face  clouded :  was  he  going  into  it  all  again  ? 
But  he  read  her  look  and  went  on  reassuringly:  "That 
was  what  I  meant  by  saying  that  I  hoped  you  would 
take  me  on  faith.  If  I  want  the  welfare  of  Westmore 
it's  above  all,  I  believe,  because  I  want  Westmore  to 
see  you  as  7  do — as  the  dispenser  of  happiness,  who 
could  not  endure  to  benefit  by  any  wrong  or  injustice 
to  others." 

[  202  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Of  course,  of  course  I  don't  want  to  do  them 
injustice ! " 

"Well,  then " 

He  had  seated  himself  beside  her  again,  clasping  in 
his  the  hand  with  which  she  was  fretting  the  lace-edged 
sheet.  He  felt  her  restless  fingers  surrender  slowly,  and 
her  eyes  turned  to  him  in  appeal. 

"But  I  care  for  what  people  say  of  you  too!  And 
you  know — it's  horrid,  but  one  must  consider  it — if  they 
say  you're  spending  my  money  imprudently.  .  ."  The 
blood  rose  to  her  neck  and  face.  "I  don't  mind  for 
myself.  .  .  even  if  I  have  to  give  up  as  many  things  as 
papa  and  Mr.  Tredegar  think.  .  .  but  there  is  Cicely 
.  .  .  and  if  people  said.  .  ." 

"If  people  said  I  was  spending  Cicely's  money  on 
improving  the  condition  of  the  people  to  whose  work 
she  will  some  day  owe  all  her  wealth — "  Amherst 
paused:  "Well,  I  would  rather  hear  that  said  of  me 
than  any  other  thing  I  can  think  of,  except  one." 

"Except  what?" 

"That  I  was  doing  it  with  her  mother's  help  and 
approval." 

She  drew  a  long  tremulous  sigh:  he  knew  it  was 
always  a  relief  to  her  to  have  him  assert  himself 
strongly.  But  a  residue  of  resistance  still  clouded  her 
mind. 

"I  should  always  want  to  help  you,  of  course;  but  if 
[  203  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Mr.  Tredegar  and  Halford  Gaines  think  your  plan  un- 
businesslike  " 

"Mr.  Tredegar  and  Halford  Gaines  are  certain  to 
think  it  so.  And  that  is  why  I  said,  just  now,  that  it 
comes,  in  the  end,  to  your  choosing  between  us;  taking 
them  on  experience  or  taking  me  on  faith." 

She  looked  at  him  wistfully.  "Of  course  I  should 
expect  to  give  up  things.  .  .  You  wouldn't  want  me 
to  live  here?" 

"I  should  not  ask  you  to,"  he  said,  half -smiling. 

"I  suppose  there  would  be  a  good  many  things  we 
couldn't  do " 

"You  would  certainly  have  less  money  for  a  number 
of  years;  after  that,  I  believe  you  would  have  more 
rather  than  less;  but  I  should  not  want  you  to  think 
that,  beyond  a  reasonable  point,  the  prosperity  of  the 
mills  was  ever  to  be  measured  by  your  dividends." 

"No."  She  leaned  back  wearily  among  the  pillows. 
"I  suppose,  for  instance,  we  should  have  to  give  up 
Europe  this  summer ?" 

Here  at  last  was  the  bottom  of  her  thought!  It  was 
always  on  the  immediate  pleasure  that  her  soul  hung: 
she  had  not  enough  imagination  to  look  beyond,  even 
in  the  projecting  of  her  own  desires.  And  it  was  on 
his  knowledge  of  this  limitation  that  Amherst  had  de- 
liberately built. 

"I  don't  see  how  you  could  go  to  Europe,"  he  said. 
[  204  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"The  doctor  thinks  I  need  it,"  she  faltered. 

"In  that  case,  of  course — "  He  stood  up,  not  ab- 
ruptly, or  with  any  show  of  irritation,  but  as  if  accepting 
this  as  her  final  answer.  "What  you  need  most,  in  the 
meantime,  is  a  little  sleep,"  he  said.  "I  will  tell  your 
maid  not  to  disturb  you  in  the  morning."  He  had  re- 
turned to  his  soothing  way  of  speech,  as  though  defi- 
nitely resigned  to  the  inutility  of  farther  argument. 
"And  I  will  say  goodbye  now,"  he  continued,  "because 
I  shall  probably  take  an  early  train,  before  you 
wake " 

She  sat  up  with  a  start.  "An  early  train?  Why, 
where  are  you  going?" 

"I  must  go  to  Chicago  some  time  this  month,  and  as 
I  shall  not  be  wanted  here  tomorrow  I  might  as  well 
run  out  there  at  once,  and  join  you  next  week  at 
Lynbrook." 

Bessy  had  grown  pale.     "  But  I  don't  understand " 

Their  eyes  met.  "Can't  you  understand  that  I  am 
human  enough  to  prefer,  under  the  circumstances,  not 
being  present  at  tomorrow's  meeting?"  he  said  with  a 
dry  laugh. 

She  sank  back  with  a  moan  of  discouragement, 
turning  her  face  away  as  he  began  to  move  toward 
his  room. 

"Shall  I  put  the  light  out?"  he  asked,  pausing  with 
his  hand  on  the  electric  button. 
[  205  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Yes,  please." 

He  pushed  in  the  button  and  walked  on,  guided 
through  the  obscurity  by  the  line  of  light  under  his 
door.  As  he  reached  the  threshold  he  heard  a  little 
choking  cry. 

"John— oh,  John!" 

He  paused. 

"I  can't  bear  it!"    The  sobs  increased. 

"Bear  what?" 

"That  you  should  hate  me " 

"Don't  be  foolish,"  he  said,  groping  for  his  door- 
handle. 

"But  you  do  hate  me — and  I  deserve  it!" 

"Nonsense,  dear.     Try  to  sleep." 

"I  can't  sleep  till  you've  forgiven  me.  Say  you 
don't  hate  me!  I'll  do  anything.  .  .  only  say  you  don't 
hate  me!" 

He  stood  still  a  moment,  thinking;  then  he  turned 
back,  and  made  his  way  across  the  room  to  her  side. 
As  he  sat  down  beside  her,  he  felt  her  arms  reach  for 
his  neck  and  her  wet  face  press  itself  against  his  cheek. 

"I'll  do  anything  .  .  ."  she  sobbed;  and  in  the  dark- 
ness he  held  her  to  him  and  hated  his  victory. 


206  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 
XIII 

MRS.  ANSELL  was  engaged  in  what  she  called  pick- 
ing up  threads.  She  had  been  abroad  for  the 
summer — had,  in  fact,  transferred  herself  but  a  few 
hours  earlier  from  her  returning  steamer  to  the  little 
station  at  Lynbrook — and  was  now,  in  the  bright  Sep- 
tember afternoon,  which  left  her  in  sole  possession  of 
the  terrace  of  Lynbrook  House,  using  that  pleasant 
eminence  as  a  point  of  observation  from  which  to 
gather  up  some  of  the  loose  ends  of  history  dropped  at 
her  departure. 

It  might  have  been  thought  that  the  actual  scene  out- 
spread below  her — the  descending  gardens,  the  tennis- 
courts,  the  farm-lands  sloping  away  to  the  blue  sea- 
like  shimmer  of  the  Hempstead  plains — offered,  at  the 
moment,  little  material  for  her  purpose;  but  that 
was  to  view  them  with  a  superficial  eye.  Mrs.  An- 
sell's  trained  gaze  was,  for  example,  greatly  enlight- 
ened by  the  fact  that  the  tennis-courts  were  fringed  by 
a  group  of  people  indolently  watchful  of  the  figures 
agitating  themselves  about  the  nets;  and  that,  as  she 
turned  her  head  toward  the  entrance  avenue,  the  reced- 
ing view  of  a  station  omnibus,  followed  by  a  luggage- 
cart,  announced  that  more  guests  were  to  be  added  to 
those  who  had  almost  taxed  to  its  limits  the  expan- 
sibility of  the  luncheon-table. 
[  207  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

All  this,  to  the  initiated  eye,  was  full  of  suggestion; 
but  its  significance  was  as  nothing  to  that  presented  by 
the  approach  of  two  figures  which,  as  Mrs.  Ansell 
watched,  detached  themselves  from  the  cluster  about 
the  tennis-ground  and  struck,  obliquely  and  at  a  des- 
ultory pace,  across  the  lawn  toward  the  terrace.  The 
figures — those  of  a  slight  young  man  with  stooping 
shoulders,  and  of  a  lady  equally  youthful  but  slenderly 
erect — moved  forward  in  absorbed  communion,  as  if 
unconscious  of  their  surroundings  and  indefinite  as  to 
their  direction,  till,  on  the  brink  of  the  wide  grass  ter- 
race just  below  their  observer's  parapet,  they  paused  a 
moment  and  faced  each  other  in  closer  speech.  This 
interchange  of  words,  though  brief  in  measure  of  time, 
lasted  long  enough  to  add  a  vivid  strand  to  Mrs.  An- 
sell's  thickening  skein ;  then,  on  a  gesture  of  the  lady's, 
and  without  signs  of  formal  leave-taking,  the  young 
man  struck  into  a  path  which  regained  the  entrance 
avenue,  while  his  companion,  quickening  ber  pace, 
crossed  the  grass  terrace  and  mounted  the  wide  stone 
steps  sweeping  up  to  the  house. 

These  brought  her  out  on  the  upper  terrace  a  few 
yards  from  Mrs.  Ansell's  post,  and  exposed  her,  unpre- 
pared, to  the  full  beam  of  welcome  which  that  lady's 
rapid  advance  threw  like  a  searchlight  across  her  path. 

" Dear  Miss  Brent!  I  was  just  wondering  how  it  was 
that  I  hadn't  seen  you  before."  Mrs.  Ansell,  as  she 
[  208  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

spoke,  drew  the  girl's  hand  into  a  long  soft  clasp  which 
served  to  keep  them  confronted  while  she  delicately 
groped  for  whatever  thread  the  encounter  seemed  to 
proffer. 

Justine  made  no  attempt  to  evade  the  scrutiny  to 
which  she  found  herself  exposed;  she  merely  released 
her  hand  by  a  movement  instinctively  evasive  of  the 
mechanical  endearment,  explaining,  with  a  smile  that 
softened  the  gesture:  "I  was  out  with  Cicely  when  you 
arrived.  We've  just  come  in." 

"The  dear  child!  I  haven't  seen  her  either."  Mrs. 
Ansell  continued  to  bestow  upon  the  speaker's  clear  dark 
face  an  intensity  of  attention  in  which,  for  the  moment, 
Cicely  had  no  perceptible  share.  "I  hear  you  are 
teaching  her  botany,  and  all  kinds  of  wonderful  things." 

Justine  smiled  again.     "I  am  trying  to  teach  her  to 

* 

wonder:  that  is  the  hardest  faculty  to  cultivate  in  the 
modern  child." 

"Yes — I  suppose  so;  in  myself,"  Mrs.  Ansell  ad- 
mitted with  a  responsive  brightness,  "I  find  it  develops 
with  age.  The  world  is  a  remarkable  place."  She 
threw  this  off  absently,  as  though  leaving  Miss  Brent  to 
apply  it  either  to  the  inorganic  phenomena  with  which 
Cicely  was  supposed  to  be  occupied,  or  to  those  subtler 
manifestations  that  engaged  her  own  attention. 

"It's  a  great  thing,"  she  continued,  "for  Bessy  to 
have  had  your  help — for  Cicely,  and  for  herself  too. 
[  209  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

There  is  so  much  that  I  want  you  to  tell  me  about  her. 
As  an  old  friend  I  want  the  benefit  of  your  fresher  eye." 

"About  Bessy  ?"  Justine  hesitated,  letting  her  glance 
drift  to  the  distant  group  still  anchored  about  the  tennis- 
nets.  "  Don't  you  find  her  looking  better  ?  " 

"Than  when  I  left  ?  So  much  so  that  I  was  unduly 
disturbed,  just  now,  by  seeing  that  clever  little  doctor — 
it  was  he,  wasn't  it,  who  came  up  the  lawn  with  you  ?" 

"Dr.  Wyant?  Yes."  Miss  Brent  hesitated  again. 
"But  he  merely  called — with  a  message." 

"  Not  prof essionally  ?  Tantmieux!  The  truth  is,  I 
was  anxious  about  Bessy  when  I  left — I  thought  she 
ought  to  have  gone  abroad  for  a  change.  But,  as  it 
turns  out,  her  little  excursion  with  you  did  as  well." 

"I  think  she  only  needed  rest.  Perhaps  her  six 
weeks  in  the  Adirondacks  were  better  than  Europe." 

"Ah,  under  your  care — that  made  them  better!" 
Mrs.  Ansell  in  turn  hesitated,  the  lines  of  her  face 
melting  and  changing  as  if  a  rapid  stage-hand  had 
shifted  them.  When  she  spoke  again  they  were  as 
open  as  a  public  square,  but  also  as  destitute  of  per- 
sonal significance,  as  flat  and  smooth  as  the  painted 
drop  before  the  real  scene  it  hides. 

"  I  have  always  thought  that  Bessy,  for  all  her  health 

and  activity,  needs  as  much  care  as  Cicely — the  kind 

of  care  a  clever  friend  can  give.     She  is  so  wasteful  of 

her  strength  and  her  nerves,  and  so  unwilling  to  listen 

[210] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

to  reason.  Poor  Dick  Westmore  watched  over  her  as 
if  she  were  a  baby;  but  perhaps  Mr.  Amherst,  who 
must  have  been  used  to  such  a  different  type  of  woman, 
doesn't  realize.  .  .  and  then  he's  so  little  here.  .  ." 
The  drop  was  lit  up  by  a  smile  that  seemed  to  make 
it  more  impenetrable.  "As  an  old  friend  I  can't  help 
telling  you  how  much  I  hope  she  is  to  have  you  with 
her  for  a  long  time — a  long,  long  time." 

Miss  Brent  bent  her  head  in  slight  acknowledgment 
of  the  tribute.  "Oh,  soon  she  will  not  need  any 
care " 

"  My  dear  Miss  Brent,  she  will  always  need  it ! "  Mrs. 
Ansell  made  a  movement  inviting  the  young  girl  to  share 
the  bench  from  which,  at  the  latter's  approach,  she  had 
risen.  "But  perhaps  there  is  not  enough  in  such  a 
life  to  satisfy  your  professional  energies." 

She  seated  herself,  and  after  an  imperceptible  pause 
Justine  sank  into  the  seat  beside  her.  "I  am  very  glad, 
just  now,  to  give  my  energies  a  holiday,"  she  said,  lean- 
ing back  with  a  little  sigh  of  retrospective  weariness. 

"You  are  tired  too  ?  Bessy  wrote  me  you  had  been 
quite  used  up  by  a  trying  case  after  we  saw  you  at 
Hanaford." 

Miss  Brent  smiled.  "When  a  nurse  is  fit  for  work 
she  calls  a  trying  case  a  'beautiful'  one." 

"But  meanwhile — ?"  Mrs.  Ansell  shone  on  her 
with  elder-sisterly  solicitude.  "Meanwhile,  why  not 
[211] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

stay  on  with  Cicely — above  all,  with  Bessy  ?  Surely  she's 
a  'beautiful'  case  too." 

"Isn't  she?"     Justine  laughingly  agreed. 

"And  if  you  want  to  be  tried —  Mrs.  Ansell  swept 
the  scene  with  a  slight  lift  of  her  philosophic  shoulders — 
"you'll  find  there  are  trials  enough  everywhere." 

Her  companion  started  up  with  a  glance  at  the  small 
watch  on  her  breast.  "  One  of  them  is  that  it's  already 
after  four,  and  that  I  must  see  that  tea  is  sent  down  to 
the  tennis-ground,  and  the  new  arrivals  looked  after." 

"I  saw  the  omnibus  on  its  way  to  the  station.  Are 
many  more  people  coming?" 

"Five  or  six,  I  believe.  The  house  is  usually  full  for 
Sunday." 

Mrs.  Ansell  made  a  slight  motion  to  detain  her. 
"And  when  is  Mr.  Amherst  expected?" 

Miss  Brent's  pale  cheek  seemed  to  take  on  a  darker 
tone  of  ivory,  and  her  glance  dropped  from  her  com- 
panion's face  to  the  vivid  stretch  of  gardens  at  their 
feet.  "Bessy  has  not  told  me,"  she  said. 

"Ah — "  the  older  woman  rejoined,  looking  also 
toward  the  gardens,  as  if  to  intercept  Miss  Brent's 
glance  in  its  flight.  The  latter  stood  still  a  moment, 
with  the  appearance  of  not  wishing  to  evade  whatever 
else  her  companion  might  have  to  say ;  then  she  moved 
away,  entering  the  house  by  one  window  just  as  Mr. 
Langhope  emerged  from  it  by  another. 
[212] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

The  sound  of  his  stick  tapping  across  the  bricks  roused 
Mrs.  Ansell  from  her  musings,  but  she  showed  her 
sense  of  his  presence  simply  by  returning  to  the  bench 
she  had  just  left;  and  accepting  this  mute  invitation, 
Mr.  Langhope  crossed  the  terrace  and  seated  himself 
at  her  side. 

When  he  had  done  so  they  continued  to  look  at  each 
other  without  speaking,  after  the  manner  of  old  friends 
possessed  of  occult  means  of  communication;  and  as 
the  result  of  this  inward  colloquy  Mr.  Langhope  at 
length  said:  "Well,  what  do  you  make  of  it?" 

"What  do  you?"  she  rejoined,  turning  full  upon  him 
a  face  so  released  from  its  usual  defences  and  disguises 
that  it  looked  at  once  older  and  more  simple  than  the 
countenance  she  presented  to  the  world. 

Mr.  Langhope  waved  a  deprecating  hand.  "I  want 
your  fresher  impressions." 

"That's  what  I  just  now  said  to  Miss  Brent." 

"You've  been  talking  to  Miss  Brent?" 

"Only  a  flying  word — she  had  to  go  and  look  after 
the  new  arrivals." 

Mr.  Langhope's  attention  deepened.  "Well,  what 
did  you  say  to  her  ?" 

"Wouldn't  you  rather  hear  what  she  said  to  me?" 

He  smiled.  "A  good  cross-examiner  always  gets  the 
answers  he  wants.  Let  me  hear  your  side,  and  I  shall 
know  hers." 

[  213  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I  should  say  that  applied  only  to  stupid  cross- 
examiners;  or  to  those  who  have  stupid  subjects 
to  deal  with.  And  Miss  Brent  is  not  stupid,  you 
know." 

"  Far  from  it !     What  else  do  you  make  out  ?  " 

"I  make  out  that  she's  in  possession." 

"Here?" 

"Don't)  look  startled.     Do  you  dislike  her?" 

"Heaven  forbid — with  those  eyes!  She  has  a  wit  of 
her  own,  too — and  she  certainly  makes  things  easier 
for  Bessy." 

"  She  guards  her  carefully,  at  any  rate.  I  could  find 
out  nothing." 

"About  Bessy?" 

"About  the  general  situation." 

"Including  Miss  Brent?" 

Mrs.  Ansell  smiled  faintly.  "I  made  one  little  dis- 
covery about  her." 

"Well?" 

"She's  intimate  with  the  new  doctor." 

"Wyant?"  Mr.  Langhope's  interest  dropped.  "What 
of  that  ?  I  believe  she  knew  him  before." 

"I  daresay.  It's  of  no  special  importance,  except  as 
giving  us  a  possible  clue  to  her  character.  She  strikes 
me  as  interesting  and  mysterious." 

Mr.  Langhope  smiled.  "The  things  your  imagina- 
tion does  for  you!" 

[214] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"It  helps  me  to  see  that  we  may  find  Miss  Brent  use- 
ful as  a  friend." 

"A  friend?" 

"An  ally."  She  paused,  as  if  searching  for  a  word. 
"She  may  restore  the  equilibrium." 

Mr.  Langhope's  handsome  face  darkened.  "Open 
Bessy's  eyes  to  Amherst  ?  Damn  him ! "  he  said  quietly. 

Mrs.  Ansell  let  the  imprecation  pass.  "When  was  he 
last  here?"  she  asked. 

"Five  or  six  weeks  ago — for  one  night.  His  only 
visit  since  she  came  back  from  the  Adirondack^." 

"What  do  you  think  his  motive  is?  He  must  know 
what  he  risks  in  losing  his  hold  on  Bessy." 

"His  motive  ?  With  your  eye  for  them,  can  you  ask  ? 
A  devouring  ambition,  that's  all!  Haven't  you  noticed 
that,  in  all  except  the  biggest  minds,  ambition  takes  the 
form  of  wanting  to  command  where  one  has  had  to 
obey  ?  Amherst  has  been  made  to  toe  the  line  at  West- 
more,  and  now  he  wants  Truscomb — yes,  and  Halford 
Gaines,  too ! — to  do  the  same.  That's  the  secret  of  his 
servant-of-the-people  pose — gad,  I  believe  it's  the  whole 
secret  of  his  marriage!  He's  devouring  my  daughter's 
substance  to  pay  off  an  old  score  against  the  mills. 
He'll  never  rest  till  he  has  Truscomb  out,  and  some 
creature  of  his  own  in  command — and  then,  vogue  la 
galere!  If  it  were  women,  now,"  Mr.  Langhope 
summed  up  impatiently,  "one  could  understand  it,  at 
[215] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

his  age,  and  with  that  damned  romantic  head — but  to  be 
put  aside  for  a  lot  of  low  mongrelly  socialist  mill-hands 
— ah,  my  poor  girl — my  poor  girl!" 

Mrs.  Ansell  mused.  "You  didn't  write  me  that 
things  were  so  bad.  There's  been  no  actual  quarrel  ?" 
she  asked. 

"How  can  there  be,  when  the  poor  child  does  all  he 
wants  ?  He's  simply  too  busy  to  come  and  thank  her ! " 

"Too  busy  at  Hanaford?" 

"So  he  says.  Introducing  the  golden  age  at  West- 
more — it's  likely  to  be  the  age  of  copper  at  Lynbrook." 

Mrs.  Ansell  drew  a  meditative  breath.  "I  was 
thinking  of  that.  I  understood  that  Bessy  would  have 
to  retrench  while  the  changes  at  Westmore  were  going 
on." 

"Well — didn't  she  give  up  Europe,  and  cable  over  to 
countermand  her  new  motor?" 

"But  the  life  here!  This  mob  of  people!  Miss 
Brent  tells  me  the  house  is  full  for  every  week-end." 

"Would  you  have  my  daughter  cut  off  from  all  her 
friends?" 

Mrs.  Ansell  met  this  promptly.  "From  some  of  the 
new  ones,  at  any  rate!  Have  you  heard  who  has  just 
arrived  ?  " 

Mr.  Langhope's  hesitation  showed  a  tinge  of  em- 
barrassment. "I'm  not  sure — some  one  has  always 
just  arrived." 

[216] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Well,  the  Fenton  Carburys,  then!"  Mrs.  Ansell 
left  it  to  her  tone  to  annotate  the  announcement. 

Mr.  Langhope  raised  his  eyebrows  slightly.  "Are 
they  likely  to  be  an  exceptionally  costly  pleasure  ?" 

"If  you're  trying  to  prove  that  I  haven't  kept  to  the 
point — I  can  assure  you  that  I'm  well  within  it!" 

"But  since  the  good  Blanche  has  got  her  divorce  and 
married  Carbury,  wherein  do  they  differ  from  other 
week-end  automata?" 

"Because  most  divorced  women  marry  again  to  be 
respectable*" 

Mr.  Langhope  smiled  faintly.  "Yes — that's  their 
punishment.  But  it  would  be  too  dull  for  Blanche." 

"Precisely.  She  married  again  to  see  Ned  Bow- 
fort!" 

"Ah — that  may  yet  be  hers!" 

Mrs.  Ansell  sighed  at  his  perversity.  "Meanwhile, 
she's  brought  him  here,  and  it  is  unnatural  to  see  Bessy 
lending  herself  to  such  combinations." 

"You're  corrupted  by  a  glimpse  of  the  old  societies. 
Here  Bowfort  and  Carbury  are  simply  hands  at  bridge." 

"Old  hands  at  it — yes!  And  the  bridge  is  another 
point:  Bessy  never  used  to  play  for  money." 

"Well,  she  may  make  something,  and  offset  her  hus- 
band's prodigalities." 

"There  again — with  this  train  de  vie,  how  on  earth 
are  both  ends  to  meet  ?" 

[  217  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Mr.  Langhope  grown  suddenly  grave,  struck  his  cane 
resoundingly  on  the  terrace.  "Westmore  and  Lyn- 
brook?  I  don't  want  them  to — I  want  them  to  get 
farther  and  farther  apart!" 

She  cast  on  him  a  look  of  startled  divination.  "You 
want  Bessy  to  go  on  spending  too  much  money  ? " 

"How  can  I  help  it  if  it  costs  ?" 

"If  what  costs —  ? "  She  stopped,  her  eyes  still  wide; 
then  their  glances  crossed,  and  she  exclaimed:  "If 
your  scheme  costs  ?  It  is  your  scheme,  then  ?" 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders  again.  "It's  a  passive 
attitude " 

"Ah,  the  deepest  plans  are  that!"  Mr.  Langhope 
uttered  no  protest,  and  she  continued  to  piece  her  con- 
jectures together.  "But  you  expect  it  to  lead  up  to 
something  active.  Do  you  want  a  rupture?" 

"I  want  him  brought  back  to  his  senses." 

"Do  you  think  that  will  bring  him  back  to  her?" 

"Where  the  devil  else  will  he  have  to  go?" 

Mrs.  Ansell's  eyes  dropped  toward  the  gardens,  across 
which  desultory  knots  of  people  were  straggling  back 
from  the  ended  tennis-match.  "Ah,  here  they  all 
come,"  she  said,  rising  with  a  half-sigh;  and  as  she 
stood  watching  the  advance  of  the  brightly-tinted  groups 
she  added  slowly:  "It's  ingenious — but  you  don't  un- 
derstand him." 

Mr.  Langhope  stroked  his  moustache.  "Perhaps 
[218  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

not,"  he  assented  thoughtfully.  "But  suppose  we  go 
in  before  they  join  us?  I  want  to  show  you  a  set  of 
Ming  I  picked  up  the  other  day  for  Bessy.  I  flatter 
myself  I  do  understand  Ming." 

XIV 

JUSTINE  BRENT,  her  household  duties  discharged, 
had  gone  upstairs  to  her  room,  a  little  turret 
chamber  projecting  above  the  wide  terrace  below,  from 
which  the  sounds  of  lively  intercourse  now  rose  in- 
creasingly to  her  window. 

Bessy,  she  knew,  would  have  preferred  to  have  her  re- 
main with  the  party  from  whom  these  evidences  of  gaiety 
proceeded.  Mrs.  Amherst  had  grown  to  depend  on  her 
friend's  nearness.  She  liked  to  feel  that  Justine's  quick 
hand  and  eye  were  always  in  waiting  on  her  impulses, 
prompt  to  interpret  and  execute  them  without  any 
exertion  of  her  own.  Bessy  combined  great  zeal  in 
the  pursuit  of  sport — a  tireless  passion  for  the  saddle, 
the  golf-course,  the  tennis-court — with  an  almost  ori- 
ental inertia  within  doors,  an  indolence  of  body  and 
brain  that  made  her  shrink  from  the  active  obligations 
of  hospitality,  though  she  had  grown  to  depend  more 
and  more  on  the  distractions  of  a  crowded  house. 

But  Justine,  though  grateful,  and  anxious  to  show 
her  gratitude,  was  unwilling  to  add  to  her  other  duties 
[219  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

that  of  joining  in  the  amusements  of  the  house-party. 
She  made  no  pretense  of  effacing  herself  when  she 
thought  her  presence  might  be  useful — but,  even  if  she 
had  cared  for  the  diversions  in  favour  at  Lynbrook,  a 
certain  unavowed  pride  would  have  kept  her  from  par- 
ticipating in  them  on  the  same  footing  with  Bessy's 
guests.  She  was  not  in  the  least  ashamed  of  her 
position  in  the  household,  but  she  chose  that  every  one 
else  should  be  aware  of  it,  that  she  should  not  for  an 
instant  be  taken  for  one  of  the  nomadic  damsels  who 
form  the  camp-followers  of  the  great  army  of  pleasure. 
Yet  even  on  this  point  her  sensitiveness  was  not  exag- 
gerated. Adversity  has  a  deft  hand  at  gathering  loose 
strands  of  impulse  into  character,  and  Justine's  early 
contact  with  different  phases  of  experience  had  given 
her  a  fairly  clear  view  of  life  in  the  round,  what  might 
be  called  a  sound  working  topography  of  its  relative 
heights  and  depths.  She  was  not  seriously  afraid  of 
being  taken  for  anything  but  what  she  really  was, 
and  still  less  did  she  fear  to  become,  by  force  of  pro- 
pinquity and  suggestion,  the  kind  of  being  for  whom 
she  might  be  temporarily  taken. 

When,  at  Bessy's  summons,  she  had  joined  the 
latter  at  her  camp  in  the  Adirondacks,  the  transition 
from  a  fatiguing  "case"  at  Hanaford  to  a  life  in  which 
sylvan  freedom  was  artfully  blent  with  the  most  studied 
personal  luxury,  had  come  as  a  delicious  refreshment  to 
[  220  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

body  and  brain.  She  was  weary,  for  the  moment,  of 
ugliness,  pain  and  hard  work,  and  life  seemed  to  re- 
cover its  meaning  under  the  aspect  of  a  graceful  leisure. 
Lynbrook  also,  whither  she  had  been  persuaded  to  go 
with  Bessy  at  the  end  of  their  woodland  cure,  had  at 
first  amused  and  interested  her.  The  big  house  on  its 
spreading  terraces,  with  windows  looking  over  bright 
gardens  to  the  hazy  distances  of  the  plains,  seemed  a 
haven  of  harmless  ease  and  gaiety.  Justine  was  sen- 
sitive to  the  finer  graces  of  luxurious  living,  to  the  warm 
lights  on  old  pictures  and  bronzes,  the  soft  mingling  of 
tints  in  faded  rugs  and  panellings  of  time-warmed  oak. 
And  the  existence  to  which  this  background  formed  a 
setting-  seemed  at  first  to  have  the  same  decorative 
qualities.  It  was  pleasant,  for  once,  to  be  among  people 
whose  chief  business  was  to  look  well  and  take  life 
lightly,  and  Justine's  own  buoyancy  of  nature  won  her 
immediate  access  among  the  amiable  persons  who 
peopled  Bessy's  week-end  parties.  If  they  had  only 
abounded  a  little  more  in  their  own  line  she  might  have 
succumbed  to  their  spell.  But  it  seemed  to  her  that 
they  missed  the  poetry  of  their  situation,  transacting 
their  pleasures  with  the  dreary  method  and  shortness 
of  view  of  a  race  tethered  to  the  ledger.  Even  the 
verbal  flexibility  which  had  made  her  feel  that  she  was 
in  a  world  of  freer  ideas,  soon  revealed  itself  as  a  form 
of  flight  from  them,  in  which  the  race  was  distinctly  to 
[221] 


the  swift;  and  Justine's  phase  of  passive  enjoyment 
passed  with  the  return  of  her  physical  and  mental  ac- 
tivity. She  was  a  creature  tingling  with  energy,  a  little 
fleeting  particle  of  the  power  that  moves  the  sun  and 
the  other  stars,  and  the  deadening  influences  of  the  life 
at  Lynbrook  roused  these  tendencies  to  greater  inten- 
sity, as  a  suffocated  person  will  suddenly  develop  ab- 
normal strength  in  the  struggle  for  air. 

She  did  not,  indeed,  regret  having  come.  She  was 
glad  to  be  with  Bessy,  partly  because  of  the  childish 
friendship  which  had  left  such  deep  traces  in  her  lonely 
heart,  and  partly  because  what  she  had  seen  of  her 
friend's  situation  stirred  in  her  all  the  impulses  of  sym- 
pathy and  service;  but  the  idea  of  continuing  in  such  a 
life,  of  sinking  into  any  of  the  positions  of  semi-depend- 
ence that  an  adroit  and  handsome  girl  may  create  for 
herself  in  a  fashionable  woman's  train — this  possibility 
never  presented  itself  to  Justine  till  Mrs.  Ansell,  that 
afternoon,  had  put  it  into  words.  And  to  hear  it  was 
to  revolt  from  it  with  all  the  strength  of  her  inmost  nat- 
ure. The  thought  of  the  future  troubled  her,  not  so 
much  materially — for  she  had  a  light  bird-like  trust  in 
the  morrow's  fare — but  because  her  own  tendencies 
seemed  to  have  grown  less  clear,  because  she  could  not 
rest  in  them  for  guidance  as  she  had  once  done.  The 
renewal  of  bodily  activity  had  not  brought  back  her 
faith  in  her  calling:  her  work  had  lost  the  light  of  con- 
[  222  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

secration.  She  no  longer  felt  herself  predestined  to 
nurse  the  sick  for  the  rest  of  her  life,  and  in  her  inex- 
perience she  reproached  herself  with  this  instability. 
Youth  and  womanhood  were  in  fact  crying  out  in  her 
for  their  individual  satisfaction;  but  instincts  as  deep- 
seated  protected  her  from  even  a  momentary  illusion 
as  to  the  nature  of  this  demand.  She  wanted  happi- 
ness, and  a  life  of  her  own,  as  passionately  as  young 
flesh-and-blood  had  ever  wanted  them;  but  they  must 
come  bathed  in  the  light  of  imagination  and  penetrated 
by  the  sense  of  larger  affinities.  She  could  not  conceive 
of  shutting  herself  into  a  little  citadel  of  personal  well- 
being  while  the  great  tides  of  existence  rolled  on  un- 
heeded outside.  Whether  they  swept  treasure  to  her 
feet,  or  strewed  her  life  with  \vreckage,  she  felt,  even 
now,  that  her  place  was  there,  on  the  banks,  in  sound 
and  sight  of  the  great  current;  and  just  in  proportion 
as  the  scheme  of  life  at  Lynbrook  succeeded  in  shutting 
out  all  sense  of  that  vaster  human  consciousness,  so  did 
its  voice  speak  more  thrillingly  within  her. 

Somewhere,  she  felt — but,  alas!  still  out  of  reach — 
was  the  life  she  longed  for,  a  life  in  which  high  chance* 
of  doing  should  be  mated  with  the  finer  forms  of  enjoy- 
ing. But  what  title  had  she  to  a  share  in  such  an  ex^ 
istence?  Why,  none  but  her  sense  of  what  it  was 
worth — and  what  did  that  count  for,  in  a  world  which 
used  all  its  resources  to  barricade  itself  against  all  its 
[  223  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

opportunities  ?  She  knew  there  were  girls  who  sought, 
by  what  is  called  a  "good"  marriage,  an  escape  into 
the  outer  world  of  doing  and  thinking — utilizing  an 
empty  brain  and  full  pocket  as  the  key  to  these  envied 
fields.  Some  such  chance  the  life  at  Lynbrook  seemed 
likely  enough  to  offer — one  is  not,  at  Justine's  age  and 
with  her  penetration,  any  more  blind  to  the  poise  of 
one's  head  than  to  the  turn  of  one's  ideas ;  but  here  the 
subtler  obstacles  of  taste  and  pride  intervened.  Not 
even  Bessy's  transparent  manoeuvrings,  her  tender 
solicitude  for  her  friend's  happiness,  could  for  a  mo- 
ment weaken  Justine's  resistance.  If  she  must  marry 
without  love — and  this  was  growing  conceivable  to 
her — she  must  at  least  merge  her  craving  for  per- 
sonal happiness  in  some  view  of  life  in  harmony  with 
hers. 

A  tap  on  her  door  interrupted  these  musings,  to  one 
aspect  of  which  Bessy  Amherst's  entrance  seemed  sud- 
denly to  give  visible  expression. 

"Why  did  you  run  off,  Justine  ?  You  promised  to  be 
down-stairs  when  I  came  back  from  tennis." 

"  Till  you  came  back — wasn't  it,  dear?"  Justine  cor- 
rected with  a  smile,  pushing  her  arm-chair  forward  as 
Bessy  continued  to  linger  irresolutely  in  the  doorway. 
"I  saw  that  there  was  a  fresh  supply  of  tea  in  the 
drawing-room,  and  I  knew  you  would  be  there  before 
the  omnibus  came  from  the  station." 
[  224  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Oh,  I  was  there — but  everybody  was  asking  for 
you " 

"Everybody?"  Justine  gave  a  mocking  lift  to  her 
dark  eyebrows. 

"Well — Westy  Gaines,  at  any  rate;  the  moment  he 
set  foot  in  the  house!"  Bessy  declared  with  a  laugh  as 
she  dropped  into  the  arm-chair. 

Justine  echoed  the  laugh,  but  offered  no  comment 
on  the  statement  which  accompanied  it,  and  for  a 
moment  both  women  were  silent,  Bessy  tilting  her 
pretty  discontented  head  against  the  back  of  the 
chair,  so  that  her  eyes  were  on  a  level  with  those  of 
her  friend,  who  leaned  near  her  in  the  embrasure  of 
the  window. 

"I  can't  understand  you,  Justine.  You  know  well 
enough  what  he's  come  back  for." 

"In  order  to  dazzle  Hanaford  with  the  fact  that  he 
has  been  staying  at  Lynbrook!" 

"Nonsense — the  novelty  of  that  has  worn  off.  He's 
been  here  three  times  since  we  came  back." 

"You  are  admirably  hospitable  to  your  family " 

Bessy  let  her  pretty  ringed  hands  fall  with  a  dis- 
couraged gesture.  "Why  do  you  find  him  so  much 
worse  than — than  other  people  ?  " 

Justine's  eye-brows  rose  again.  "In  the  same  capac- 
ity? You  speak  as  if  I  had  boundless  opportunities 
of  comparison.'* 

[225] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Well,  you've  Dr.  Wyant!"  Mrs.  Amherst  suddenly 
flung  back  at  her. 

Justine  coloured  under  the  unexpected  thrust,  but 
met  her  friend's  eyes  steadily.  "As  an  alternative  to 
Westy?  Well,  if  I  were  on  a  desert  island — but  I'm 
not!"  she  concluded  with  a  careless  laugh. 

Bessy  frowned  and  sighed.  "You  can't  mean  that, 
of  the  two — ?"  She  paused  and  then  went  on  doubt- 
fully: "It's  because  he's  cleverer?" 

"Dr.  Wyant  ?"  Justine  smiled.  "It's  not  making  an 
enormous  claim  for  him!" 

"Oh,  I  know  Westy 's  not  brilliant;  but  stupid  men 
are  not  always  the  hardest  to  live  with."  She  sighed 
again,  and  turned  on  Justine  a  glance  charged  with  con- 
jugal experience. 

Justine  had  sunk  into  the  window-seat,  her  thin  hands 
clasping  her  knee,  in  the  attitude  habitual  to  her  medi- 
tative moments.  "Perhaps  not,"  she  assented;  "but 
I  don't  know  that  I  should  care  for  a  man  who  made 
life  easy;  I  should  want  some  one  who  made  it  in- 
teresting." 

Bessy  met  this  with  a  pitying  exclamation.  "Don't 
imagine  you  invented  that !  Every  girl  thinks  it.  After- 
wards she  finds  out  that  it's  much  pleasanter  to  be 
thought  interesting  herself." 

She  spoke  with  a  bitterness  that  issued  strangely  from 
her  lips.  It  was  this  bitterness  which  gave  her  soft 
[  226  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

personality  the  sharp  edge  that  Justine  had  felt  in  it 
on  the  day  of  their  meeting  at  Hanaford. 

The  girl,  at  first,  had  tried  to  defend  herself  from 
these  scarcely- veiled  confidences,  distasteful  enough  in 
themselves,  and  placing  her,  if  she  listened,  in  an  atti- 
tude of  implied  disloyalty  to  the  man  under  whose  roof 
they  were  spoken.  But  a  precocious  experience  of  life 
had  taught  her  that  emotions  too  strong  for  the  nature 
containing  them  turn,  by  some  law  of  spiritual  chem- 
istry, into  a  rankling  poison;  and  she  had  therefore  re- 
signed herself  to  serving  as  a  kind  of  outlet  for  Bessy's 
pent-up  discontent.  It  was  not  that  her  friend's  griev- 
ance appealed  to  her  personal  sympathies;  she  had 
learned  enough  of  the  situation  to  give  her  moral  as- 
sent unreservedly  to  the  other  side.  But  it  was  charac- 
teristic of  Justine  that  where  she  sympathized  least  she 
sometimes  pitied  most.  Like  all  quick  spirits  she  was 
often  intolerant  of  dulness;  yet  when  the  intolerance 
passed  it  left  a  residue  of  compassion  for  the  very  in- 
capacity at  which  she  chafed.  It  seemed  to  her  that 
the  tragic  crises  in  wedded  life  usually  turned  on  the 
stupidity  of  one  of  the  two  concerned;  and  of  the  two 
victims  of  such  a  catastrophe  she  felt  most  for  the  one 
whose  limitations  had  probably  brought  it  about.  After 
all,  there  could  be  no  imprisonment  as  cruel  as  that  of 
being  bounded  by  a  hard  small  nature.  Not  to  be 
penetrable  at  all  points  to  the  shifting  lights,  the  wan- 
[  227  ] 


dering  music  of  the  world — she  could  imagine  no  phy- 
sical disability  as  cramping  as  that.  How  the  little 
parched  soul,  in  solitary  confinement  for  life,  must  pine 
and  dwindle  in  its  blind  cranny  of  self-love! 

To  be  one's  self  wide  open  to  the  currents  of  life 
does  not  always  contribute  to  an  understanding  of 
narrower  natures;  but  in  Justme  the  personal  emotions 
were  enriched  and  deepened  by  a  sense  of  participa- 
tion in  all  that  the  world  about  her  was  doing,  suffering 
and  enjoying;  and  this  sense  found  expression  in  the 
instinct  of  ministry  and  solace.  She  was  by  nature  a 
redresser,  a  restorer;  and  in  her  work,  as  she  had  once 
told  Amherst,  the  longing  to  help  and  direct,  to  hasten 
on  by  personal  intervention  time's  slow  and  clumsy 
processes,  had  often  been  in  conflict  with  the  restric- 
tions imposed  by  her  profession.  But  she  had  no  idle 
desire  to  probe  the  depths  of  other  lives;  and  where 
there  seemed  no  hope  of  serving  she  shrank  from  fruit- 
less confidences.  She  was  beginning  to  feel  this  to  be 
the  case  with  Bessy  Amherst.  To  touch  the  rock  was 
not  enough,  if  there  were  but  a  few  drops  within  it;  yet 
in  this  barrenness  lay  the  pathos  of  the  situation — and 
after  all,  may  not  the  scanty  spring  be  fed  from  a  fuller 
current  ? 

"I'm  not  sure  about  that,"  she  said,  answering  her 
friend's  last  words  after  a  deep  pause  of  deliberation. 
"I  mean  about  its  being  so  pleasant  to  be  found  inter- 
[  228  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

esting.  I'm  sure  the  passive  part  is  always  the  dull 
one:  life  has  been  a  great  deal  more  thrilling  since  we 
found  out  that  we  revolved  about  the  sun,  instead  of 
sitting  still  and  fancying  that  all  the  planets  were  danc- 
ing attendance  on  us.  After  all,  they  were  not;  and 
it's  rather  humiliating  to  think  how  the  morning  stars 
must  have  laughed  together  about  it!" 

There  was  no  self-complacency  in  Justine's  eager- 
ness to  help.  It  was  far  easier  for  her  to  express  it  in 
action  than  in  counsel,  to  grope  for  the  path  with  her 
friend  than  to  point  the  way  to  it;  and  when  she  had  to 
speak  she  took  refuge  in  figures  to  escape  the  pedantry 
of  appearing  to  advise.  But  it  was  not  only  to  Mrs. 
Dressel  that  her  parables  were  dark,  and  the  blank 
look  in  Bessy's  eyes  soon  snatched  her  down  from  the 
height  of  metaphor. 

"I  mean,"  she  continued  with  a  smile,  "that,  as 
human  nature  is  constituted,  it  has  got  to  find  its  real 
self — the  self  to  be  interested  in — outside  of  what  we 
conventionally  call  'self:  the  particular  Justine  or  Bessy 
who  is  clamouring  for  her  particular  morsel  of  life. 
You  see,  self  isn't  a  thing  one  can  keep  in  a  box — bits 
of  it  keep  escaping,  and  flying  off  to  lodge  in  all  sorts 
of  unexpected  crannies;  we  come  across  scraps  of  our- 
selves in  the  most  unlikely  places — as  I  believe  you 
would  in  Westmore,  if  you'd  only  go  back  there  and 
look  for  them!" 

[  229  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Bessy's  lip  trembled  and  the  colour  sprang  to  her 
face;  but  she  answered  with  a  flash  of  irritation:  "Why 
doesn't  he  look  for  me  there,  then — if  he  still  wants  to 
find  me?" 

"Ah — it's  for  him  to  look  here — to  find  himself  fiere," 
Justine  murmured. 

"Well,  he  never  comes  here!     That's  his  answer." 

"He  will — he  will!  Only,  when  he  does,  let  him 
find  you." 

"Find  me?  I  don't  understand.  How  can  he, 
when  he  never  sees  me  ?  I'm  no  more  to  him  than  the 
carpet  on  the  floor!" 

Justine  smiled  again.  "Well — be  that  then!  The 
thing  is  to  be." 

"Under  his  feet?  Thank  you!  Is  that  what  you 
mean  to  marry  for?  It's  not  what  husbands  admire 
in  one,  you  know!" 

"No."  Justine  stood  up  with  a  sense  of  stealing 
discouragement.  "But  I  don't  think  I  want  to  be 
admired " 

"Ah,  that's  because  you  know  you  are!"  broke  from 
the  depths  of  the  other's  bitterness. 

The  tone  smote  Justine,  and  she  dropped  into  the 
seat  at  her  friend's  side,  silently  laying  a  hand  on  Bessy's 
feverishly-clasped  fingers. 

"Oh,  don't  let  us  talk  about  me,"  complained  the 
latter,  from  whose  lips  the  subject  was  never  long 
[  230  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

absent.  "And  you  mustn't  think  I  want  you  to 
marry,  Justine;  not  for  myself,  I  mean — I'd  so  much 
rather  keep  you  here.  I  feel  much  less  lonely  when 
you're  with  me.  But  you  say  you  won't  stay — and  it's 
too  dreadful  to  think  of  your  going  back  to  that  dreary 
hospital." 

"But  you  know  the  hospital's  not  dreary  to  me," 
Justine  interposed;  "it's  the  most  interesting  place  I've 
ever  known." 

Mrs.  Amherst  smiled  indulgently  on  this  extrava- 
gance. "A  great  many  people  go  through  the  craze 
for  philanthropy — "  she  began  in  the  tone  of  mature 
experience;  but  Justine  interrupted  her  with  a  laugh. 

"Philanthropy?  I'm  not  philanthropic.  I  don't 
think  I  ever  felt  inclined  to  do  good  in  the  abstract — 
any  more  than  to  do  ill !  I  can't  remember  that  I  ever 
planned  out  a  course  of  conduct  in  my  life.  It's  only," 
she  went  on,  with  a  puzzled  frown,  as  if  honestly  trying 
to  analyze  her  motives,  "it's  only  that  I'm  so  fatally 
interested  in  people  that  before  I  know  it  I've  slipped 
into  their  skins;  and  then,  of  course,  if  anything  goes 
wrong  with  them,  it's  just  as  if  it  had  gone  wrong  with 
me;  and  I  can't  help  trying  to  rescue  myself  from  their 
troubles !  I  suppose  it's  what  you'd  call  meddling — and 
so  should  I,  if  I  could  only  remember  that  the  other 
people  were  not  myself!" 

Bessy  received  this  with  the  mild  tolerance  of  su- 
[231  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

perior  wisdom.  Once  safe  on  the  tried  ground  of  tra- 
ditional authority,  she  always  felt  herself  Justine's 
superior.  "That's  all  very  well  now — you  see  the 
romantic  side  of  it,"  she  said,  as  if  humouring  her 
friend's  vagaries.  "But  in  time  you'll  want  something 
else;  you'll  want  a  husband  and  children — a  life  of 
your  own.  And  then  you'll  have  to  be  more  practical. 
It's  ridiculous  to  pretend  that  comfort  and  money  don't 
make  a  difference.  And  if  you  married  a  rich  man, 
just  think  what  a  lot  of  good  you  could  do !  Westy  will 
be  very  well  off — and  I'm  sure  he'd  let  you  endow 
hospitals  and  things.  Think  how  interesting  it  would 
be  to  build  a  ward  in  the  very  hospital  where  you'd 
been  a  nurse!  I  read  something  like  that  in  a  novel 
the  other  day — it  was  beautifully  described.  All  the 
nurses  and  doctors  that  the  heroine  had  worked  with 
were  there  to  receive  her.  .  .  and  her  little  boy  went 
about  and  gave  toys  to  the  crippled  children.  .  ." 

If  the  speaker's  concluding  instance  hardly  produced 
the  effect  she  had  intended,  it  was  perhaps  only  because 
Justine's  attention  had  been  arrested  by  the  earlier  part 
of  the  argument.  It  was  strange  to  have  marriage 
urged  on  her  by  a  woman  who  had  twice  failed  to  find 
happiness  in  it — strange,  and  yet  how  vivid  a  sign  that, 
even  to  a  nature  absorbed  in  its  personal  demands,  not 
happiness  but  completeness  is  the  inmost  craving!  "A 
life  of  your  own" — that  was  what  even  Bessy,  in  her 
[  232  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

obscure  way,  felt  to  be  best  worth  suffering  for.  And 
how  was  a  spirit  like  Justine's,  thrilling  with  youth  and 
sympathy,  to  conceive  of  an  isolated  existence  as  the 
final  answer  to  that  craving  ?  A  life  circumscribed  by 
one's  own  poor  personal  consciousness  would  not  be 
life  at  all — far  better  the  "adventure  of  the  diver"  than 
the  shivering  alone  on  the  bank!  Bessy,  reading  en- 
couragement in  her  silence,  returned  her  hand-clasp 
with  an  affectionate  pressure. 

"You  would  like  that,  Justine?"  she  said,  secretly 
proud  of  having  hit  on  the  convincing  argument. 

"To  endow  hospitals  with  your  cousin's  money  ?  No; 
I  should  want  something  much  more  exciting!" 

Bessy's  face  kindled.  "You  mean  travelling  abroad 
— and  I  suppose  New  York  in  winter  ?  " 

Justine  broke  into  a  laugh.  "I  was  thinking  of  your 
cousin  himself  when  I  spoke."  And  to  Bessy's  disap- 
pointed cry — "Then  it  is  Dr.  Wyant,  after  all?"  she 
answered  lightly,  and  without  resenting  the  challenge: 
"I  don't  know.  Suppose  we  leave  it  to  the  oracle." 

"The  oracle?" 

"  Time.  His  question-and-answer  department  is  gen- 
erally the  most  reliable  in  the  long  run."  She  started 
up,  gently  drawing  Bessy  to  her  feet.  "And  just  at 
present  he  reminds  me  that  it's  nearly  six,  and  that  you 
promised  Cicely  to  go  and  see  her  before  you  dress  for 
dinner." 

[  233  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Bessy  rose  obediently.  "Does  he  remind  you  of 
your  promises  too?  You  said  you'd  come  down  to 
dinner  tonight." 

"  Did  I  ?  "  Justine  hesitated.  "  Well,  I'm  coming, " 
she  said,  smiling  and  kissing  her  friend. 


XV 


WHEN  the  door  closed  on  Mrs.  Amherst  a  resolve 
which  had  taken  shape  in  Justine's  mind  dur- 
ing their  talk  together  made  her  seat  herself  at  her 
writing-table,  where,  after  a  moment's  musing  over  her 
suspended  pen,  she  wrote  and  addressed  a  hurried  note. 
This  business  despatched,  she  put  on  her  hat  and  jacket, 
and  letter  in  hand  passed  down  the  corridor  from  her 
room,  and  descended  to  the  entrance-hall  below.  She 
might  have  consigned  her  missive  to  the  post-box  which 
conspicuously  tendered  its  services  from  a  table  near 
the  door;  but  to  do  so  would  delay  the  letter's  despatch 
till  morning,  and  she  felt  a  sudden  impatience  to  see 
it  start. 

The  tumult  on  the  terrace  had  transferred  itself 
within  doors,  and  as  Justine  went  down  the  stairs  she 
heard  the  click  of  cues  from  the  billiard-room,  the  talk 
and  laughter  of  belated  bridge-players,  the  movement 
of  servants  gathering  up  tea-cups  and  mending  fires. 
She  had  hoped  to  find  the  hall  empty,  but  the  sight 
[234] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

of  Westy  Gaines's  figure  looming  watchfully  on  the 
threshold  of  the  smoking-room  gave  her,  at  the  last 
bend  of  the  stairs,  a  little  start  of  annoyance.  He 
would  want  to  know  where  she  was  going,  he  would 
offer  to  go  with  her,  and  it  would  take  some  time  and 
not  a  little  emphasis  to  make  him  understand  that  his 
society  was  not  desired. 

This  was  the  thought  that  flashed  through  Justine's 
mind  as  she  reached  the  landing;  but  the  next  moment 
it  gave  way  to  a  contradictory  feeling.  Westy  Gaines 
was  not  alone  in  the  hall.  From  under  the  stairway 
rose  the  voices  of  a  group  ensconced  in  that  popular 
retreat  about  a  chess-board;  and  as  Justine  reached 
the  last  turn  of  the  stairs  she  perceived  that  Mason 
Winch,  an  earnest  youth  with  advanced  views  on  po- 
litical economy,  was  engaged,  to  the  diversion  of  a 
circle  of  spectators,  in  teaching  the  Telfer  girls  chess. 
The  futility  of  trying  to  fix  the  spasmodic  attention  of 
this  effervescent  couple,  and  their  instructor's  grave 
unconsciousness  of  the  fact,  constituted,  for  the  lookers- 
on,  the  peculiar  diversion  of  the  scene.  It  was  of 
course  inevitable  that  young  Winch,  on  his  arrival  at 
Lynbrook,  should  have  succumbed  at  once  to  the  tu- 
multuous charms  of  the  Telfer  manner,  which  was 
equally  attractive  to  inarticulate  youth  and  to  tired  and 
talked-out  middle-age;  but  that  he  should  have  per- 
ceived no  resistance  in  their  minds  to  the  deliberative 
[235] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

processes  of  the  game  of  chess,  was,  even  to  the  Telfers 
themselves,  a  source  of  unmitigated  gaiety.  Nothing 
seemed  to  them  funnier  than  that  any  one  should  credit 
them  with  any  mental  capacity;  and  they  had  inex- 
haustibly amusing  ways  of  drawing  out  and  showing  off 
each  other's  ignorance. 

It  was  on  this  scene  that  Westy's  appreciative  eyes 
had  been  fixed  till  Justine's  appearance  drew  them  to 
herself.  He  pronounced  her  name  joyfully,  and  moved 
forward  to  greet  her;  but  as  their  hands  met  she  under- 
stood that  he  did  not  mean  to  press  his  company  upon 
her.  Under  the  eye  of  the  Lynbrook  circle  he  was 
chary  of  marked  demonstrations,  and  even  Mrs.  Am- 
herst's  approval  could  not,  at  such  moments,  bridge 
over  the  gap  between  himself  and  the  object  of  his 
attentions.  A  Gaines  was  a  Gaines  in  the  last  analysis, 
and  apart  from  any  pleasing  accident  of  personality; 
but  what  was  Miss  Brent  but  the  transient  vehicle  of 
those  graces  which  Providence  has  provided  for  the 
delectation  of  the  privileged  sex  ? 

These  influences  were  visible  in  the  temperate  warmth 
of  Westy's  manner,  and  in  his  way  of  keeping  a  back- 
ward eye  on  the  mute  interchange  of  comment  about 
the  chess-board.  At  another  time  his  embarrassment 
would  have  amused  Justine;  but  the  feelings  stirred  by 
her  talk  with  Bessy  had  not  subsided,  and  she  recog- 
nized with  a  sting  of  mortification  the  resemblance  be- 
[  236  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

tween  her  view  of  the  Lynbrook  set  and  its  estimate  of 
herself.  If  Bessy's  friends  were  negligible  to  her  she 
was  almost  non-existent  to  them;  and,  as  against  her- 
self, they  were  overwhelmingly  provided  with  tangible 
means  of  proving  their  case. 

Such  considerations,  at  a  given  moment,  may  prevail 
decisively  even  with  a  nature  armed  against  them  by 
insight  and  irony;  and  the  mere  fact  that  Westy  Gaines 
did  not  mean  to  join  her,  and  that  he  was  withheld 
from  doing  so  by  the  invisible  pressure  of  the  Lynbrook 
standards,  had  the  effect  of  precipitating  Justine's 
floating  intentions. 

If  anything  farther  had  been  needed  to  hasten  this 
result,  it  would  have  been  accomplished  by  the  sound 
of  footsteps  which,  over-taking  her  a  dozen  yards  from 
the  house,  announced  her  admirer's  impetuous  if  tardy 
pursuit.  The  act  of  dismissing  him,  though  it  took  but 
a  word  and  was  effected  with  a  laugh,  left  her  pride 
quivering  with  a  hurt  the  more  painful  because  she 
would  not  acknowledge  it.  That  she  should  waste  a 
moment's  resentment  on  the  conduct  of  a  person  so 
unimportant  as  poor  Westy,  showed  her  in  a  flash  the 
intrinsic  falseness  of  her  position  at  Lynbrook.  She 
saw  that  to  disdain  the  life  about  her  had  not  kept  her 
intact  from  it;  and  the  knowledge  made  her  feel  anew 
the  need  of  some  strong  decentralizing  influence,  some 
purifying  influx  of  emotion  and  activity. 
[  237  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

She  had  walked  on  quickly  through  the  clear  October 
twilight,  which  was  still  saturated  with  the  after-glow 
of  a  vivid  sunset;  and  a  few  minutes  brought  her  to  the 
village  stretching  along  the  turnpike  beyond  the  Lyn- 
brook  gates.  The  new  post-office  dominated  the  row 
of  shabby  houses  and  "stores"  set  disjointedly  under 
reddening  maples,  and  its  arched  doorway  formed  the 
centre  of  Lynbrook's  evening  intercourse. 

Justine,  hastening  toward  the  knot  of  loungers  on 
the  threshold,  had  no  consciousness  of  anything  outside 
of  her  own  thoughts;  and  as  she  mounted  the  steps  she 
was  surprised  to  see  Dr.  Wyant  detach  himself  from 
the  group  and  advance  to  meet  her. 

"May  I  post  your  letter?"  he  asked,  lifting  his  hat. 

His  gesture  uncovered  the  close-curling  hair  of  a 
small  delicately-finished  head  just  saved  from  effemi- 
nacy by  the  vigorous  jut  of  heavy  eye-brows  meeting 
above  full  grey  eyes.  The  eyes  again,  at  first  sight, 
might  have  struck  one  as  too  expressive,  or  as  express- 
ing things  too  purely  decorative  for  the  purposes  of  a 
young  country  doctor  with  a  growing  practice;  but  this 
estimate  was  corrected  by  an  unexpected  abruptness 
in  their  owner's  voice  and  manner.  Perhaps  the  final 
impression  produced  on  a  close  observer  by  Dr. 
Stephen  Wyant  would  have  been  that  the  contradictory 
qualities  of  which  he  was  compounded  had  not  yet  been 
brought  into  equilibrium  by  the  hand  of  time. 
[  238  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Justine,  in  reply  to  his  question,  had  drawn  back  a 
step,  slipping  her  letter  into  the  breast  of  her  jacket. 

"That  is  hardly  worth  while,  since  it  was  addressed 
to  you,"  she  answered  with  a  slight  smile  as  she  turned 
to  descend  the  post-office  steps. 

Wyant,  still  carrying  his  hat,  and  walking  with  quick 
uneven  steps,  followed  her  in  silence  till  they  had  passed 
beyond  earshot  of  the  loiterers  on  the  threshold;  then, 
in  the  shade  of  the  maple  boughs,  he  pulled  up  and 
faced  her. 

"You've  written  to  say  that  I  may  come  tomorrow  ?" 

Justine  hesitated.     "Yes,"  she  said  at  length. 

"  Good  God !  You  give  royally ! "  he  broke  out,  push- 
ing his  hand  with  a  nervous  gesture  through  the  thin 
dark  curls  on  his  forehead. 

Justine  laughed,  with  a  trace  of  nervousness  in  her 
own  tone.  "And  you  talk — well,  imperially!  Aren't 
you  afraid  to  bankrupt  the  language?" 

"What  do  you  mean?"  he  said,  staring. 

"What  do  you  mean?  I  have  merely  said  that  I 
would  see  you  tomorrow " 

"Well,"  he  retorted,  "that's  enough  for  my  happi- 


ness ! 


She  sounded  her  light  laugh  again.  "I'm  glad  to 
know  you're  so  easily  pleased." 

"I'm  not!  But  you  couldn't  have  done  a  cruel  thing 
without  a  struggle;  and  since  you're  ready  to  give 
[  239  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

me  my  answer  tomorrow,  I  know  it  can't  be  a  cruel 
one." 

They  had  begun  to  walk  onward  as  they  talked,  but 
at  this  she  halted.  "Please  don't  take  that  tone.  I 
dislike  sentimentality!"  she  exclaimed,  with  a  tinge  of 
imperiousness  that  was  a  surprise  to  her  own  ears. 

It  was  not  the  first  time  in  the  course  of  her  friend- 
ship with  Stephen  Wyant  that  she  had  been  startled  by 
this  intervention  of  something  within  her  that  resisted 
and  almost  resented  his  homage.  When  they  were 
apart,  she  was  conscious  only  of  the  community  of  in- 
terests and  sympathies  that  had  first  drawn  them  to- 
gether. Why  was  it  then — since  his  looks  were  of  the 
kind  generally  thought  to  stand  a  suitor  in  good  stead — 
that  whenever  they  had  met  of  late  she  had  been  subject 
to  these  rushes  of  obscure  hostility,  the  half-physical, 
half-moral  shrinking  from  some  indefinable  element  in 
his  nature  against  which  she  was  constrained  to  defend 
herself  by  perpetual  pleasantry  and  evasion  ? 

To  Wyant,  at  any  rate,  the  answer  was  not  far  to 
seek.  His  pale  face  reflected  the  disdain  in  hers  as  he 
returned  ironically:  "A  thousand  pardons;  I  know  I'm 
not  always  in  the  key." 

"The  key?" 

"I  haven't  yet  acquired  the  Lynbrook  tone.  You 
must  make  allowances  for  my  lack  of  opportunity." 

The  retort  on  Justine's  lips  dropped  to  silence,  as 
[  240  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

though  his  words  had  in  fact  brought  an  answer  to  her 
inward  questioning.  Could  it  be  that  he  was  right — 
that  her  shrinking  from  him  was  the  result  of  an  in- 
creased sensitiveness  to  faults  of  taste  that  she  would 
once  have  despised  herself  for  noticing  ?  When  she  had 
first  known  him,  in  her  work  at  St.  Elizabeth's  some 
three  years  earlier,  his  excesses  of  manner  had  seemed 
to  her  merely  the  boyish  tokens  of  a  richness  of  nature 
not  yet  controlled  by  experience.  Though  Wyant  was 
somewhat  older  than  herself  there  had  always  been  an 
element  of  protection  in  her  feeling  for  him,  and  it  was 
perhaps  this  element  which  formed  the  real  ground  of 
her  liking.  It  was,  at  any  rate,  uppermost  as  she  re- 
turned, with  a  softened  gleam  of  mockery:  "Since  you 
are  so  sure  of  my  answer  I  hardly  know  why  I  should 
see  you  tomorrow." 

"You  mean  me  to  take  it  now?"  he  exclaimed. 

"I  don't  mean  you  to  take  it  at  all  till  it's  given — 
above  all  not  to  take  it  for  granted!" 

His  jutting  brows  drew  together  again.  "Ah,  I  can't 
split  hairs  with  you.  Won't  you  put  me  out  of  my 
misery?" 

She  smiled,  but  not  unkindly.  "Do  you  want  an 
anaesthetic  ?  " 

"No — a  clean  cut  with  the  knife!" 

"You  forget  that  we're  not  allowed  to  despatch  hope- 
Jess  cases — more's  the  pity!" 
[241  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

He  flushed  to  the  roots  of  his  thin  hair.  "Hopeless 
cases?  That's  it,  then — that's  my  answer?" 

They  had  reached  the  point  where,  at  the  farther 
edge  of  the  straggling  settlement,  the  tiled  roof  of  the 
railway-station  fronted  the  post-office  cupola;  and  the 
shriek  of  a  whistle  now  reminded  Justine  that  the  spot 
was  not  propitious  to  private  talk.  She  halted  a  mo- 
ment before  speaking. 

"I  have  no  answer  to  give  you  now  but  the  one  in 
my  note — that  I'll  see  you  tomorrow." 

"But  if  you're  sure  of  knowing  tomorrow  you  must 
know  now!" 

Their  eyes  met,  his  eloquently  pleading,  hers  kind 
but  still  impenetrable.  "If  I  knew  now,  you  should 
know  too.  Please  be  content  with  that,"  she  re- 
joined. 

"How  can  I  be,  when  a  day  may  make  sucn  a  differ- 
ence? When  I  know  that  every  influence  about  you 
is  fighting  against  me?" 

The  words  flashed  a  refracted  light  far  down  into 
the  causes  of  her  own  uncertainty. 

"Ah,"  she  said,  drawing  a  little  away  from  him, 
"I'm  not  so  sure  that  I  don't  like  a  fight!" 

"  Is  that  why  you  won't  give  in  ?  "  He  moved  toward 
her  with  a  despairing  gesture.  "If  I  let  you  go  now, 
you're  lost  to  me!" 

She  stood  her  ground,  facing  him  with  a  quick  lift  of 
[  242  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

the  head.  "If  you  don't  let  me  go  I  certainly  am,"  she 
said;  and  he  drew  back,  as  if  conscious  of  the  useless- 
ness  of  the  struggle.  His  submission,  as  usual,  had  a 
disarming  effect  on  her  irritation,  and  she  held  out  her 
hand.  "Come  tomorrow  at  three,"  she  said,  her  voice 
and  manner  suddenly  seeming  to  give  back  the  hope 
she  had  withheld  from  him. 

He  seized  on  her  hand  with  an  inarticmate  murmur; 
but  at  the  same  moment  a  louder  whistle  and  the 
thunder  of  an  approaching  train  reminded  her  of  the 
impossibility  of  prolonging  the  scene.  She  was  ordi- 
narily careless  of  appearances,  but  while  she  was  Mrs. 
Amherst's  guest  she  did  not  care  to  be  seen  romantically 
loitering  through  the  twilight  with  Stephen  Wyant; 
and  she  freed  herself  with  a  quick  goodbye. 

He  gave  her  a  last  look,  hesitating  and  imploring; 
then,  in  obedience  to  her  gesture,  he  turned  away  and 
strode  off  in  the  opposite  direction. 

As  soon  as  he  had  left  her  she  began  to  retrace  her 
steps  toward  Lynbrook  House;  but  instead  of  travers- 
ing the  whole  length  of  the  village  she  passed  through  a 
turnstile  in  the  park  fencing,  taking  a  more  circuitous 
but  quieter  way  home. 

She  walked  on  slowly  through  the  dusk,  wishing  to 

give  herself  time  to  think  over  her  conversation  with 

Wyant.     Now  that  she  was  alone  again,  it  seemed  to 

her  that  the  part  she  had  played  had  been  both  incon- 

[  243  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

sistent  and  undignified.  When  she  had  written  to 
Wyant  that  she  would  see  him  on  the  morrow  she  had 
done  so  with  the  clear  understanding  that  she  was  to 
give,  at  that  meeting,  a  definite  answer  to  his  offer  of 
marriage;  and  during  her  talk  with  Bessy  she  had  sud- 
denly, and,  as  it  seemed  to  her,  irrevocably,  decided 
that  the  answer  should  be  favourable.  From  the  first 
days  of  her  acquaintance  with  Wyant  she  had  appre- 
ciated his  intelligence  and  had  been  stimulated  by  his 
zeal  for  his  work.  He  had  remained  only  six  months 
at  Saint  Elizabeth's,  and  though  his  feeling  for  her  had 
even  then  been  manifest,  it  had  been  kept  from  expres- 
sion by  the  restraint  of  their  professional  relation,  and 
by  her  absorption  in  her  duties.  It  was  only  when 
they  had  met  again  at  Lynbrook  that  she  had  begun  to 
feel  a  personal  interest  in  him.  His  youthful  promise 
seemed  nearer  fulfillment  than  she  had  once  thought 
possible,  and  the  contrast  he  presented  to  the  young 
men  in  Bessy's  train  was  really  all  in  his  favour.  He 
had  gained  in  strength  and  steadiness  without  losing 
his  high  flashes  of  enthusiasm;  and  though,  even  now, 
she  was  not  in  love  with  him,  she  began  to  feel  that  the 
union  of  their  common  interests  might  create  a  life 
full  and  useful  enough  to  preclude  the  possibility  of 
vague  repinings.  It  would,  at  any  rate,  take  her  out 
of  the  stagnant  circle  of  her  present  existence,  and  re- 
store her  to  contact  with  the  fruitful  energies  of  life. 
[  244  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

All  this  had  seemed  quite  clear  when  she  wrote  her 
letter;  why,  then,  had  she  not  made  use  of  their  chance 
encounter  to  give  her  answer,  instead  of  capriciously 
postponing  it?  The  act  might  have  been  that  of  a 
self-conscious  girl  in  her  teens ;  but  neither  inexperience 
nor  coquetry  had  prompted  it.  She  had  merely  yielded 
to  the  spirit  of  resistance  that  Wyant's  presence  had  of 
late  aroused  in  her;  and  the  possibility  that  this  resist- 
ance might  be  due  to  some  sense  of  his  social  defects, 
his  lack  of  measure  and  facility,  was  so  humiliating 
that  for  a  moment  she  stood  still  in  the  path,  half- 
meaning  to  turn  back  and  overtake  him 

As  she  paused  she  was  surprised  to  hear  a  man's 
step  behind  her;  and  the  thought  that  it  might  be 
Wyant's  brought  about  another  revulsion  of  feeling. 
What  right  had  he  to  pursue  her  in  this  way,  to  dog  her 
steps  even  into  the  Lynbrook  grounds  ?  She  was  sure 
that  his  persistent  attentions  had  already  attracted  the 
notice  of  Bessy's  visitors;  and  that  he  should  thus  force 
himself  on  her  after  her  dismissal  seemed  suddenly  to 
make  their  whole  relation  ridiculous. 

She  turned  about  to  rebuke  him,  and  found  herself 
face  to  face  with  John  Amherst. 


[  245  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 
XVI 

AMHERST,  on  leaving  the  train  at  Lynbrook,  had 
paused  in  doubt  on  the  empty  platform.  His 
return  was  unexpected,  and  no  carriage  awaited  him; 
but  he  caught  the  signal  of  the  village  cab-driver's  ready 
whip.  Amherst,  however,  felt  a  sudden  desire  to  post- 
pone the  moment  of  arrival,  and  consigning  his  luggage 
to  the  cab  he  walked  away  toward  the  turnstile  through 
which  Justine  had  passed.  In  thus  taking  the  longest 
way  home  he  was  yielding  another  point  to  his  reluct- 
ance. He  knew  that  at  that  hour  his  wife's  visitors 
might  still  be  assembled  in  the  drawing-room,  and  he 
wished  to  avoid  making  his  unannounced  entrance 
among  them. 

It  was  not  till  now  that  he  felt  the  embarrassment 
of  such  an  arrival.  For  some  time  past  he  had 
known  that  he  ought  to  go  back  to  Lynbrook,  but  he 
had  not  known  how  to  tell  Bessy  that  he  was  coming. 
Lack  of  habit  made  him  inexpert  in  the  art  of  easy 
transitions,  and  his  inability  to  bridge  over  awkward 
gaps  had  often  put  him  at  a  disadvantage  with  his  wife 
and  her  friends.  He  had  not  yet  learned  the  import- 
ance of  observing  the  forms  which  made  up  the  daily 
ceremonial  of  their  lives,  and  at  present  there  was  just 
enough  soreness  between  himself  and  Bessy  to  make 
such  observances  more  difficult  than  usual. 
[  246  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

There  had  been  no  open  estrangement,  but  peace  had 
been  preserved  at  the  cost  of  a  slowly  accumulated  tale 
of  grievances  on  both  sides.  Since  Amherst  had  won  his 
point  about  the  mills,  the  danger  he  had  foreseen  had 
been  realized:  his  victory  at  Westmore  had  been  a 
defeat  at  Lynbrook.  It  would  be  too  crude  to  say  that 
his  wife  had  made  him  pay  for  her  public  concession 
by  the  private  disregard  of  his  wishes;  and  if  some- 
thing of  this  sort  had  actually  resulted,  his  sense  of 
fairness  told  him  that  it  was  merely  the  natural  reaction 
of  a  soft  nature  against  the  momentary  strain  of  self- 
denial  At  first  he  had  been  hardly  aware  of  this  con- 
sequence of  his  triumph.  The  joy  of  being  able  to 
work  his  will  at  Westmore  obscured  all  lesser  emotions ; 
and  his  sentiment  for  Bessy  had  long  since  shrunk  into 
one  of  those  shallow  pools  of  feeling  which  a  sudden 
tide  might  fill,  but  which  could  never  again  be  the  deep 
perennial  spring  from  which  his  life  was  fed. 

The  need  of  remaining  continuously  at  Hanaford 
while  the  first  changes  were  making  had  increased  the 
strain  of  the  situation.  He  had  never  expected  that 
Bessy  would  stay  there  with  him — had  perhaps,  at  heart, 
hardly  wished  it — and  her  plan  of  going  to  the  Adiron- 
dacks  with  Miss  Brent  seemed  to  him  a  satisfactory 
alternative  to  the  European  trip  she  had  renounced. 
He  felt  as  relieved  as  though  some  one  had  taken  off  his 
hands  the  task  of  amusing  a  restless  child,  and  he  let 
[  247  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

his  wife  go  without  suspecting  that  the  moment  might 
be  a  decisive  one  between  them.  But  it  had  not  oc- 
curred to  Bessy  that  any  one  could  regard  six  weeks  in 
the  Adirondacks  as  an  adequate  substitute  for  a  summer 
abroad.  She  felt  that  her  sacrifice  deserved  recogni- 
tion, and  personal  devotion  was  the  only  form  of  recog- 
nition which  could  satisfy  her.  She  had  expected  Am- 
herst  to  join  her  at  the  camp,  but  he  did  not  come;  and 
when  she  went  back  to  Long  Island  she  did  not  stop  to 
see  him,  though  Hanaford  lay  in  her  way.  At  the 
moment  of  her  return  the  work  at  the  mills  made  it 
impossible  for  him  to  go  to  Lyn brook;  and  thus  the 
weeks  drifted  on  without  their  meeting. 

At  last,  urged  by  his  mother,  he  had  gone  down  to 
Long  Island  for  a  night;  but  though,  on  that  occasion, 
he  had  announced  his  coming,  he  found  the  house  full, 
and  the  whole  party  except  Mr.  Langhope  in  the  act 
of  starting  off  to  a  dinner  in  the  neighbourhood.  He 
was  of  course  expected  to  go  too,  and  Bessy  appeared 
hurt  when  he  declared  that  he  was  too  tired  and  pre- 
ferred to  remain  with  Mr.  Langhope;  but  she  did  not 
suggest  staying  at  home  herself,  and  drove  off  in  a 
mood  of  exuberant  gaiety.  Amherst  had  been  too  busy 
all  his  life  to  know  what  intricacies  of  perversion  a  sen- 
timental grievance  may  develop  in  an  unoccupied  mind, 
and  he  saw  in  Bessy's  act  only  a  sign  of  indifference. 
The  next  day  she  complained  to  him  of  money  difficul- 
[248  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

ties,  as  though  surprised  that  her  income  had  been 
suddenly  cut  down;  and  when  he  reminded  her  that 
she  had  consented  of  her  own  will  to  this  temporary  re- 
duction, she  burst  into  tears  and  accused  him  of  caring 
only  for  Westmore. 

He  went  away  exasperated  by  her  inconsequence,  and 
bills  from  Lynbrook  continued  to  pour  in  on  him.  In 
the  first  days  of  their  marriage,  Bessy  had  put  him  in 
charge  of  her  exchequer,  and  she  was  too  indolent — and 
at  heart  perhaps  too  sensitive — to  ask  him  to  renounce 
the  charge.  It  was  clear  to  him,  therefore,  how  little 
she  was  observing  the  spirit  of  their  compact,  and  his 
mind  was  tormented  by  the  anticipation  of  financial 
embarrassments.  He  wrote  her  a  letter  of  gentle  ex- 
postulation, but  in  her  answer  she  ignored  his  remon- 
strance; and  after  that  silence  fell  between  them. 

The  only  way  to  break  this  silence  was  to  return  to 
Lynbrook;  but  now  that  he  had  come  back,  he  did  not 
know  what  step  to  take  next.  Something  in  the  atmos- 
phere of  his  wife's  existence  seemed  to  paralyze  his 
will-power.  When  all  about  her  spoke  a  language  so 
different  from  his  own,  how  could  he  hope  to  make 
himself  heard  ?  He  knew  that  her  family  and  her 
immediate  friends — Mr.  Langhope,  the  Gaineses,  Mrs. 
Ansell  and  Mr.  Tredegar — far  from  being  means  of 
communication,  were  so  many  sentinels  ready  to  raise 
the  drawbridge  and  drop  the  portcullis  at  his  ap- 
[  249  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

proach.  They  were  all  in  league  to  stifle  the  incipi- 
ent feelings  he  had  roused  in  Bessy,  to  push  her  back 
into  the  deadening  routine  of  her  former  life,  and  the 
only  voice  that  might  conceivably  speak  for  him  was 
Miss  Brent's. 

The  "case"  which,  unexpectedly  presented  to  her  by 
one  of  the  Hope  Hospital  physicians,  had  detained  Jus- 
tine at  Hanaford  during  the  month  of  June,  was  the 
means  of  establishing  a  friendship  between  herself  and 
Amherst.  They  did  not  meet  often,  or  get  to  know  each 
other  very  well;  but  he  saw  her  occasionally  at  his 
mother's  and  at  Mrs.  Dressel's,  and  once  he  took  her 
out  to  Westmore,  to  consult  her  about  the  emergency 
hospital  which  was  to  be  included  among  the  first  im- 
provements there.  The  expedition  had  been  memora- 
ble to  both;  and  when,  some  two  weeks  later,  Bessy 
wrote  suggesting  that  she  should  take  Miss  Brent  to 
the  Adirondacks,  it  seemed  to  Amherst  that  there  was 
no  one  whom  he  would  rather  have  his  wife  choose  as 
her  companion. 

He  was  much  too  busy  at  the  time  to  cultivate  or 
analyze  his  feeling  for  Miss  Brent;  he  rested  vaguely  in 
the  thought  of  her,  as  of  the  "nicest"  girl  he  had  ever 
met,  and  was  frankly  pleased  when  accident  brought 
them  together;  but  the  seeds  left  in  both  their  minds 
by  these  chance  encounters  had  not  yet  begun  to  ger- 
minate. 

[250] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

So  unperceived  had  been  their  gradual  growth  in 
intimacy  that  it  was  a  surprise  to  Amherst  to  find  him- 
self suddenly  thinking  of  her  as  a  means  of  communica- 
tion with  his  wife;  but  the  thought  gave  him  such  en- 
couragement that,  when  he  saw  Justine  in  the  path 
before  him  he  went  toward  her  with  unusual  eagerness. 

Justine,  on  her  part,  felt  an  equal  pleasure.  She 
knew  that  Bessy  did  not  expect  her  husband,  and  that 
his  prolonged  absence  had  already  been  the  cause  of 
malicious  comment  at  Lynbrook;  and  she  caught  at 
the  hope  that  this  sudden  return  might  betoken  a  more 
favourable  turn  of  affairs. 

"Oh,  I  am  so  glad  to  see  you!"  she  exclaimed;  and 
her  tone  had  the  effect  of  completing  his  reassurance, 
his  happy  sense  that  she  would  understand  and  help 
him. 

"I  wanted  to  see  you  too,"  he  began  confusedly; 
then,  conscious  of  the  intimacy  of  the  phrase,  he  added 
with  a  slight  laugh:  "The  fact  is,  I'm  a  culprit  looking 
for  a  peace-maker." 

"A  culprit?" 

"I've  been  so  tied  down  at  the  mills  that  I  didn't 
know,  till  yesterday,  just  when  I  could  break  away; 
and  in  the  hurry  of  leaving — "  He  paused  again, 
checked  by  the  impossibility  of  uttering,  to  the  girl 
before  him,  the  little  conventional  falsehoods  which 
formed  the  small  currency  of  Bessy's  circle.  Not  that 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

any  scruple  of  probity  restrained  him:  in  trifling  mat- 
ters he  recognized  the  usefulness  of  such  counters  in 
the  social  game;  but  when  he  was  with  Justine  he 
always  felt  the  obscure  need  of  letting  his  real  self  be 
seen. 

"I  was  stupid  enough  not  to  telegraph,"  he  said, 
"and  I  am  afraid  my  wife  will  think  me  negligent:  she 
often  has  to  reproach  me  for  my  sins  of  omission,  and 
this  time  I  know  they  are  many." 

The  girl  received  this  in  silence,  less  from  embar- 
rassment than  from  surprise;  for  she  had  already 
guessed  that  it  was  as  difficult  for  Amherst  to  touch, 
even  lightly,  on  his  private  affairs,  as  it  was  instinctive 
with  his  wife  to  pour  her  grievances  into  any  willing  ear. 
Justine's  first  thought  was  one  of  gratification  that  he 
should  have  spoken,  and  of  eagerness  to  facilitate  the 
saying  of  whatever  he  wished  to  say;  but  before  she 
could  answer  he  went  on  hastily:  "The  fact  is,  Bessy 
does  not  know  how  complicated  the  work  at  Westmore 
is;  and  when  I  caught  sight  of  you  just  now  I  was 
thinking  that  you  are  the  only  one  of  her  friends  who 
has  any  technical  understanding  of  what  I  am  trying 
to  do,  and  who  might  consequently  help  her  to  see  how 
hard  it  is  for  me  to  take  my  hand  from  the  plough." 

Justine  listened  gravely,  longing  to  cry  out  her  com- 
prehension and  sympathy,  but  restrained  by  the  sense 
that  the  moment  was  a  critical  one,  where  impulse  must 
[252] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

not  be  trusted  too  far.  It  was  quite  possible  that  a  re- 
action of  pride  might  cause  Amherst  to  repent  even  so 
guarded  an  avowal;  and  if  that  happened,  he  might 
never  forgive  her  for  having  encouraged  him  to  speak. 
She  looked  up  at  him  with  a  smile. 

"Why  not  tell  Bessy  yourself?  Your  understanding 
of  the  case  is  a  good  deal  clearer  than  mine  or  any  one 
else's." 

"Oh,  Bessy  is  tired  of  hearing  about  it  from  me;  and 
besides — "  She  detected  a  shade  of  disappointment  in 
his  tone,  and  was  sorry  she  had  said  anything  which 
might  seem  meant  to  discourage  his  confidence.  It 
occurred  to  her  also  that  she  had  been  insincere  in  not 
telling  him  at  once  that  she  had  already  been  let  into 
the  secret  of  his  domestic  differences:  she  felt  the  same 
craving  as  Amherst  for  absolute  openness  between 
them. 

"I  know,"  she  said,  almost  timidly,  "that  Bessy  has 
not  been  quite  content  of  late  to  have  you  give  so  much 
time  to  Westmore,  and  perhaps  she  herself  thinks  it  is 
because  the  work  there  does  not  interest  her;  but  I 
believe  it  is  for  a  different  reason." 

"What  reason?"  he  asked  with  a  look  of  surprise. 

"Because  Westmore  takes  you  from  her;  because  she 
thinks  you  are  happier  there  than  at  Lynbrook." 

The  day  had  faded  so  rapidly  that  it  was  no  longer 
possible  for  the  speakers  to  see  each  other's  races,  and 
[  253  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

it  was  easier  for  both  to  communicate  through  the  veil 
of  deepening  obscurity. 

"But,  good  heavens,  she  might  be  there  with  me — 
she's  as  much  needed  there  as  I  am!"  Amherst  ex- 
claimed. 

"Yes;  but  you  must  remember  that  it's  against  all 
her  habits — and  against  the  point  of  view  of  every  one 
about  her — that  she  should  lead  that  kind  of  life;  and 
meanwhile " 

"Well?" 

"Meanwhile,  isn't  it  expedient  that  you  should,  a 
little  more,  lead  hers?" 

Always  the  same  answer  to  his  restless  questioning! 
His  mother's  answer,  the  answer  of  Bessy  and  her 
friends.  He  had  somehow  hoped  that  the  girl  at  his  side 
would  find  a  different  solution  to  the  problem,  and  his 
disappointment  escaped  in  a  bitter  exclamation. 

"But  Westmore  is  my  life — hers  too,  if  she  knew  it! 
I  can't  desert  it  now  without  being  as  false  to  her  as 
to  myself!" 

As  he  spoke,  he  was  overcome  once  more  by  the 
hopelessness  of  trying  to  put  his  case  clearly.  How 
could  Justine,  for  all  her  quickness  and  sympathy, 
understand  a  situation  of  which  the  deeper  elements 
were  necessarily  unknown  to  her?  The  advice  she 
gave  him  was  natural  enough,  and  on  her  lips  it  seemed 
not  the  counsel  of  a  shallow  expediency,  but  the  plea  of 
[  254  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

compassion  and  understanding.  But  she  knew  nothing 
of  the  long  struggle  for  mutual  adjustment  which  had 
culminated  in  this  crisis  between  himself  and  his  wife, 
and  she  could  therefore  not  see  that,  if  he  yielded  his 
point,  and  gave  up  his  work  at  Westmore,  the  conces- 
sion would  mean  not  renewal  but  destruction.  He  felt 
that  he  should  hate  Bessy  if  he  won  her  back  at  that 
price;  and  the  violence  of  his  feeling  frightened  him. 
It  was,  in  truth,  as  he  had  said,  his  own  life  that  he 
was  fighting  for.  If  he  gave  up  Wetsmore  he  could  not 
fall  back  on  the  futile  activities  of  Lynbrook,  and  fate 
might  yet  have  some  lower  alternative  to  offer.  He 
could  trust  to  his  own  strength  and  self-command  while 
his  energies  had  a  normal  outlet;  but  idleness  and 
self-indulgence  might  work  in  him  like  a  dangerous 
drug. 

Justine  kept  steadily  to  her  point.  "Westmore  must 
be  foremost  to  both  of  you  in  time;  I  don't  see  how 
either  of  you  can  escape  that.  But  the  realization  of 
it  must  come  to  Bessy  through  you,  and  for  that  reason 
I  think  that  you  ought  to  be  more  patient — that  you 
ought  even  to  put  the  question  aside  for  a  time  and 
enter  a  little  more  into  her  life  while  she  is  learning  to 
understand  yours."  As  she  ended,  it  seemed  to  her 
that  what  she  had  said  was  trite  and  ineffectual,  and 
yet  that  it  might  have  passed  the  measure  of  discretion; 
and,  torn  between  two  doubts,  she  added  hastily: 
[  255  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"But  you  have  done  just  that  in  coming  back  now — 
that  is  the  real  solution  of  the  problem." 

While  she  spoke  they  passed  out  of  the  wood-path 
they  had  been  following,  and  rounding  a  mass  of  shrub- 
bery emerged  on  the  lawn  below  the  terraces.  The 
long  bulk  of  the  house  lay  above  them,  dark  against  the 
lingering  gleam  of  the  west,  with  brightly-lit  windows 
marking  its  irregular  outline;  and  the  sight  produced 
in  Amherst  and  Justine  a  vague  sense  of  helplessness 
and  constraint.  It  was  impossible  to  speak  with  the 
same  freedom,  confronted  by  that  substantial  symbol 
of  the  accepted  order,  which  seemed  to  glare  down  on 
them  in  massive  disdain  of  their  puny  efforts  to  deflect 
the  course  of  events;  and  Amherst,  without  reverting 
to  her  last  words,  asked  after  a  moment  if  his  wife 
had  many  guests. 

He  listened  in  silence  while  Justine  ran  over  the  list 
of  names — the  Telfer  girls  and  their  brother,  Mason 
Winch  and  Westy  Gaines,  a  cluster. of  young  bridge- 
playing  couples,  and,  among  the  last  arrivals,  the 
Fenton  Carburys  and  Ned  Bowfort.  The  names  were 
all  familiar  to  Amherst — he  knew  they  represented  the 
flower  of  week-end  fashion;  but  he  did  not  remember 
having  seen  the  Carburys  among  his  wife's  guests,  and 
his  mind  paused  on  the  name,  seeking  to  regain  some 
lost  impression  connected  with  it.  But  it  evoked,  like 
the  others,  merely  the  confused  sense  of  stridency  and 
[256] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

unrest  which  he  had  brought  away  from  his  last  Lyn- 
brook  visit;  and  this  reminiscence  made  him  ask  Miss 
Brent,  when  her  list  was  ended,  if  she  did  not  think 
that  so  continuous  a  succession  of  visitors  was  too 
tiring  for  Bessy. 

"I  sometimes  think  it  tires  her  more  than  she  knows; 
but  I  hope  she  can  be  persuaded  to  take  better  care  of 
herself  now  that  Mrs.  Ansell  has  come  back." 

Amherst  halted  abruptly.     "Is  Mrs.  Ansell  here?" 

"She  arrived  from  Europe  today." 

"And  Mr.  Langhope  too,  I  suppose?" 

"Yes.     He  came  from  Newport  about  ten  days  ago." 

Amherst  checked  himself,  conscious  that  his  ques- 
tions betrayed  the  fact  that  he  and  his  wife  no  longer 
wrote  to  each  other.  The  same  thought  appeared  to 
strike  Justine,  and  they  walked  across  the  lawn  in 
silence,  hastening  their  steps  involuntarily,  as  though  to 
escape  the  oppressive  weight  of  the  words  which  had 
passed  between  them.  But  Justine  was  unwilling  that 
this  fruitless  sense  of  oppression  should  be  the  final 
outcome  of  their  talk;  and  when  they  reached  the 
upper  terrace  she  paused  and  turned  impulsively  to 
Amherst.  As  she  did  so,  the  light  from  an  uncurtained 
window  fell  on  her  face,  which  glowed  with  the  inner 
brightness  kindled  in  it  by  moments  of  strong  feeling. 

"I  am  sure  of  one  thing — Bessy  will  be  very,  very 
glad  that  you  have  come,"  she  exclaimed. 
[  257] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Thank  you,"  he  answered. 

Their  hands  met  mechanically,  and  she  turned  away 
and  entered  the  house. 


XVII 

BESSY  had  not  seen  her  little  girl  that  day,  and 
filled  with  compunction  by  Justine's  reminder, 
she  hastened  directly  to  the  school-room. 

Of  late,  in  certain  moods,  her  maternal  tenderness 
had  been  clouded  by  a  sense  of  uneasiness  in  the  child's 
presence,  for  Cicely  was  the  argument  most  effectually 
used  by  Mr.  Langhope  and  Mr.  Tredegar  in  their 
efforts  to  check  the  triumph  of  Amherst's  ideas.  Bessy, 
still  unable  to  form  an  independent  opinion  on  the 
harassing  question  of  the  mills,  continued  to  oscillate 
between  the  views  of  the  contending  parties,  now  re- 
garding Cicely  as  an  innocent  victim  and  herself  as  an 
unnatural  mother,  sacrificing  her  child's  prospects  to 
further  Amherst's  enterprise,  and  now  conscious  of  a 
vague  animosity  against  the  little  girl,  as  the  chief  cause 
of  the  dissensions  which  had  so  soon  clouded  the  skies 
of  her  second  marriage.  Then  again,  there  were  mo- 
ments when  Cicely's  rosy  bloom  reminded  her  bitterly 
of  the  child  she  had  lost — the  son  on  whom  her 
ambitions  had  been  fixed.  It  seemed  to  her  nov\  that 
if  their  boy  had  lived  she  might  have  kept  Amherst's 
[258  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

love  and  have  played  a  more  important  part  in  his  life; 
and  brooding  on  the  tragedy  of  the  child's  sickly  exist- 
ence she  resented  the  contrast  of  Cicely's  brightness  and 
vigour.  The  result  was  that  in  her  treatment  of  her 
daughter  she  alternated  between  moments  of  exag- 
gerated devotion  and  days  of  neglect,  never  long  happy 
away  from  the  little  girl,  yet  restless  and  self -tormenting 
in  her  presence. 

After  her  talk  with  Justine  she  felt  more  than  usually 
disturbed,  as  she  always  did  when  her  unprofitable 
impulses  of  self-exposure  had  subsided.  Bessy's  mind 
was  not  made  for  introspection,  and  chance  had  bur- 
dened it  with  unintelligible  problems.  She  felt  herself 
the  victim  of  circumstances  to  which  her  imagination 
attributed  the  deliberate  malice  that  children  ascribe 
to  the  furniture  they  run  against  in  playing.  This 
helped  her  to  cultivate  a  sense  of  helpless  injury  and 
to  disdain  in  advance  the  advice  she  was  perpetually 
seeking.  How  absurd  it  was,  for  instance,  to  suppose 
that  a  girl  could  understand  the  feelings  of  a  married 
woman!  Justine's  suggestion  that  she  should  humble 
herself  still  farther  to  Amherst  merely  left  in  Bessy's 
mind  a  rankling  sense  of  being  misunderstood  and 
undervalued  by  those  to  whom  she  turned  in  her  ex- 
tremity, and  she  said  to  herself,  in  a  phrase  that  sounded 
well  in  her  own  ears,  that  sooner  or  later  every  woman 
must  learn  to  fight  her  battles  alone. 
[  259  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

In  this  mood  she  entered  the  room  where  Cicely  was 
at  supper  with  her  governess,  and  enveloped  the  child 
in  a  whirl  of  passionate  caresses.  But  Cicely  had  in- 
herited the  soberer  Westmore  temper,  and  her  mother's 
spasmodic  endearments  always  had  a  repressive  effect 
on  her.  She  dutifully  returned  a  small  fraction  of 
Bessy's  kisses,  and  then,  with  an  air  of  relief,  addressed 
herself  once  more  to  her  bread  and  marmalade. 

"You  don't  seem  a  bit  glad  to  see  me!"  Bessy  ex- 
claimed, while  the  little  governess  made  a  nervous  pre- 
tence of  being  greatly  amused  at  this  prodigious  para- 
dox, and  Cicely,  setting  down  her  silver  mug,  asked 
judicially:  "Why  should  I  be  gladder  than  other  days? 
It  isn't  a  birthday." 

This  Cordelia-like  answer  cut  Bessy  to  the  quick. 
"You  horrid  child  to  say  such  a  cruel  thing  when  you 
know  I  love  you  better  and  better  every  minute!  But 
you  don't  care  for  me  any  longer  because  Justine  has 
taken  you  away  from  me!" 

This  last  charge  had  sprung  into  her  mind  in  the  act 
of  uttering  it,  but  now  that  it  was  spoken  it  instantly 
assumed  the  proportions  of  a  fact,  and  seemed  to  fur- 
nish another  justification  for  her  wretchedness.  Bessy 
was  not  naturally  jealous,  but  her  imagination  was 
thrall  to  the  spoken  word,  and  it  gave  her  a  sudden  in- 
comprehensible relief  to  associate  Justine  with  the 
obscure  causes  of  her  suffering. 
[  260  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I  know  she's  cleverer  than  I  am,  and  more  amus- 
ing, and  can  tell  you  about  plants  and  animals  and 
things.  .  .  and  I  daresay  she  tells  you  how  tiresome 
and  stupid  I  am.  .  ." 

She  sprang  up  suddenly,  abashed  by  Cicely's  aston- 
ished gaze,  and  by  the  governess's  tremulous  attempt  to 
continue  to  treat  the  scene  as  one  of  "Mamma's" 
most  successful  pleasantries. 

"Don't  mind  me — my  head  aches  horribly.  I  think 
I'll  rush  off  for  a  gallop  on  Impulse  before  dinner.  Miss 
Dill,  Cicely's  nails  are  a  sight — I  suppose  that  comes  of 
grubbing  up  wild-flowers." 

And  with  this  parting  shot  at  Justine's  pursuits  she 
swept  out  of  the  school-room,  leaving  pupil  and  teacher 
plunged  in  a  stricken  silence  from  which  Cicely  at 
length  emerged  to  say,  with  the  candour  that  Miss  Dill 
dreaded  more  than  any  punishable  offense:  "Mother's 
prettiest — but  I  do  like  Justine  the  best." 

It  was  nearly  dark  when  Bessy  mounted  the  horse 
which  had  been  hastily  saddled  in  response  to  her  order; 
but  it  was  her  habit  to  ride  out  alone  at  all  hours,  and  of 
late  nothing  but  a  hard  gallop  had  availed  to  quiet  her 
nerves.  Her  craving  for  occupation  had  increased  as  her 
life  became  more  dispersed  and  agitated,  and  the  need 
to  fill  every  hour  drove  her  to  excesses  of  bodily  exer- 
tion, since  other  forms  of  activity  were  unknown  to  her. 
[261  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

As  she  cantered  along  under  the  twilight  sky,  with  a 
strong  sea-breeze  in  her  face,  the  rush  of  air  and  the 
effort  of  steadying  her  nervous  thoroughbred  filled  her 
with  a  glow  of  bodily  energy  from  which  her  thoughts 
emerged  somewhat  cleansed  of  their  bitterness. 

She  had  been  odious  to  poor  little  Cicely,  for  whom 
she  now  felt  a  sudden  remorseful  yearning  which  almost 
made  her  turn  her  horse's  head  homeward,  that  she 
might  dash  upstairs  and  do  penance  beside  the  child's 
bed.  And  that  she  should  have  accused  Justine  of 
taking  Cicely  from  her!  It  frightened  her  to  find  her- 
self thinking  evil  of  Justine.  Bessy,  whose  perceptions 
were  keen  enough  in  certain  directions,  knew  that  her 
second  marriage  had  changed  her  relation  to  all  her 
former  circle  of  friends.  Though  they  still  rallied  about 
her,  keeping  up  the  convenient  habit  of  familiar  inter- 
course, she  had  begun  to  be  aware  that  their  view  of 
her  had  in  it  an  element  of  criticism  and  compassion. 
She  had  once  fancied  that  Amherst's  good  looks,  and 
the  other  qualities  she  had  seen  in  him,  would  imme- 
diately make  him  free  of  the  charmed  circle  in  which 
she  moved;  but  she  was  discouraged  by  his  disregard 
of  his  opportunities,  and  above  all  by  the  fundamental 
differences  in  his  view  of  life.  He  was  never  common 
or  ridiculous,  but  she  saw  that  he  would  never  acquire 
the  small  social  facilities.  He  was  fond  of  exercise, 
but  it  bored  him  to  talk  of  it.  The  men's  smoking- 
[  262  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

room  anecdotes  did  not  amuse  him,  he  was  unmoved 
by  the  fluctuations  of  the  stock-market,  he  could  not 
tell  one  card  from  another,  and  his  perfunctory  at- 
tempts at  billiards  had  once  caused  Mr.  Langhope  to 
murmur,  in  his  daughter's  hearing:  "Ah,  that's  the 
test — I  always  said  so!" 

Thus  debarred  from  what  seemed  to  Bessy  the  chief 
points  of  contact  with  life,  how  could  Amherst  hope  to 
impose  himself  on  minds  versed  in  these  larger  rela- 
tions? As  the  sense  of  his  social  insufficiency  grew 
on  her,  Bessy  became  more  sensitive  to  that  latent 
criticism  of  her  marriage  which — intolerable  thought! — 
involved  a  judgment  on  herself.  She  was  increasingly 
eager  for  the  approval  and  applause  of  her  little  audi- 
ence, yet  increasingly  distrustful  of  their  sincerity,  and 
more  miserably  persuaded  that  she  and  her  husband 
were  the  butt  of  some  of  their  most  effective  stories. 
She  knew  also  that  rumours  of  the  disagreement  about 
Westmore  were  abroad,  and  the  suspicion  that  Am- 
herst's  conduct  was  the  subject  of  unfriendly  comment 
provoked  in  her  a  reaction  of  loyalty  to  his  ideas.  .  . 

From  this  turmoil  of  conflicting  influences  only  her 
friendship  with  Justine  Brent  remained  secure.  Though 
Justine's  adaptability  made  it  easy  for  her  to  fit  into 
the  Lynbrook  life,  Bessy  knew  that  she  stood  as  much 
outside  of  it  as  Amherst.  She  could  never,  for  instance, 
be  influenced  by  what  Maria  Ansell  and  the  Gaineses 
[  263  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

and  the  Telfers  thought.  She  had  her  own  criteria  of 
conduct,  unintelligible  to  Bessy,  but  giving  her  an  in- 
dependence of  mind  on  which  her  friend  leaned  in  a 
kind  of  blind  security.  And  that  even  her  faith  in 
Justine  should  suddenly  be  poisoned  by  a  jealous 
thought  seemed  to  prove  that  the  consequences  of  her 
marriage  were  gradually  infecting  her  whole  life.  Bessy 
could  conceive  of  masculine  devotion  only  as  sub- 
servient to  its  divinity's  least  wish,  and  she  argued  that 
if  Amherst  had  really  loved  her  he  could  not  so  lightly 
have  disturbed  the  foundations  of  her  world.  And  so 
her  tormented  thoughts,  perpetually  circling  on  them- 
selves, reverted  once  more  to  their  central  grievance — 
the  failure  of  her  marriage.  If  her  own  love  had  died 
out  it  would  have  been  much  simpler — she  was  sur- 
rounded by  examples  of  the  mutual  evasion  of  a  trouble- 
some tie.  There  was  Blanche  Carbury,  for  instance, 
with  whom  she  had  lately  struck  up  an  absorbing 
friendship.  .  .  it  was  perfectly  clear  that  Blanche  Car- 
bury  wondered  how  much  more  she  was  going  to 
stand!  But  it  was  the  torment  of  Bessy's  situation 
that  it  involved  a  radical  contradiction,  that  she  still 
loved  Amherst  though  she  could  not  forgive  him  for 
having  married  her. 

Perhaps  what  she  most  suffered  from  was  his  too- 
prompt  acceptance  of  the  semi-estrangement  between 
them.     After  nearly  three  years  of  marriage  she  had 
[  264  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

still  to  learn  that  it  was  Amherst's  way  to  wrestle  with 
the  angel  till  dawn,  and  then  to  go  about  his  other 
business.  Her  own  mind  could  revolve  in  the  same 
grievance  as  interminably  as  a  squirrel  in  its  wheel, 
and  her  husband's  habit  of  casting  off  the  accepted  fact 
seemed  to  betoken  poverty  of  feeling.  If  only  he  had 
striven  a  little  harder  to  keep  her — if,  even  now,  he 
would  come  back  to  her,  and  make  her  feel  that  she 
was  more  to  him  than  those  wretched  mills! 

When  she  turned  her  mare  toward  Lynbrook,  the 
longing  to  see  Amherst  was  again  uppermost.  He  had 
not  written  for  weeks — she  had  been  obliged  to  tell 
Maria  Ansell  that  she  knew  nothing  of  his  plans,  and 
it  mortified  her  to  think  that  every  one  was  aware  of 
his  neglect.  Yet,  even  now,  if  on  reaching  the  house 
she  should  find  a  telegram  to  say  that  he  was  coming, 
the  weight  of  loneliness  would  be  lifted,  and  everything 
in  life  would  seem  different.  .  . 

Her  high-strung  mare,  scenting  the  homeward  road, 
and  excited  by  the  fantastic  play  of  wayside  lights  and 
shadows,  swept  her  along  at  a  wild  gallop  with  which 
the  fevered  rush  of  her  thoughts  kept  pace,  and  when 
she  reached  the  house  she  dropped  from  the  saddle  with 
aching  wrists  and  brain  benumbed. 

She  entered  by  a  side  door,  to  avoid  meeting  any  one, 
and  ran  upstairs  at  once,  knowing  that  she  had  barely 
time  to  dress  for  dinner.  As  she  opened  the  door  of 
[  265  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

her  sitting-room  some  one  rose  from  the  chair  by  the 
fire,  and  she  stood  still,  facing  her  husband.  .  . 

It  was  the  moment  both  had  desired,  yet  when  it 
came  it  found  them  tongue-tied  and  helpless. 

Bessy  was  the  first  to  speak.  "When  did  you  get 
here?  You  never  wrote  me  you  were  coming!" 

Amherst  advanced  toward  her,  holding  out  his  hand. 
"No;  you  must  forgive  me.  I  have  been  very  busy," 
he  said. 

Always  the  same  excuse !  The  same  thrusting  at  her 
of  the  hateful  fact  that  Westmore  came  first,  and  that 
she  must  put  up  with  whatever  was  left  of  his  time  and 
thoughts ! 

"You  are  always  too  busy  to  let  me  hear  from  you," 
she  said  coldly,  and  the  hand  which  had  sprung  toward 
his  fell  back  to  her  side. 

Even  then,  if  he  had  only  said  frankly:  "It  was  too 
difficult — I  didn't  know  how,"  the  'note  of  truth  would 
have  reached  and  moved  her;  but  he  had  striven  for  the 
tone  of  ease  and  self-restraint  that  was  habitual  among 
her  friends,  and  as  usual  his  attempt  had  been  a  failure. 

"I  am  sorry — I'm  a  bad  hand  at  writing,"  he  re- 
joined; and  his  evil  genius  prompted  him  to  add:  "I 
hope  my  coming  is  not  inconvenient?" 

The  colour  rose  to  Bessy's  face.     "Of  course  not. 
But  it  must  seem  rather  odd  to  our  visitors  that  I  should 
know  so  little  of  your  plans." 
[  266  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

At  this  he  humbled  himself  still  farther.  "I  know  I 
don't  think  enough  about  appearances — I'll  try  to  do 
better  the  next  time." 

Appearances!  He  spoke  as  if  she  had  been  re- 
proaching him  for  a  breach  of  etiquette.  .  .  it  never 
occurred  to  him  that  the  cry  came  from  her  humiliated 
heart!  The  tide  of  warmth  that  always  enveloped  her 
in  his  presence  was  receding,  and  in  its  place  a  chill 
fluid  seemed  to  creep  up  slowly  to  her  throat  and  lips. 

In  Amherst,  meanwhile,  the  opposite  process  was 
taking  place.  His  wife  was  still  to  him  the  most  beauti- 
ful woman  in  the  world,  or  rather,  perhaps,  the  only 
woman  to  whose  beauty  his  eyes  had  been  opened. 
That  beauty  could  never  again  penetrate  to  his  heart, 
but  it  still  touched  his  senses,  not  with  passion  but  with 
a  caressing  kindliness,  such  as  one  might  feel  for  the 
bright  movements  of  a  bird  or  a  kitten.  It  seemed  to 
plead  with  him  not  to  ask  of  her  more  than  she  could 
give — to  be  content  with  the  outward  grace  and  not 
seek  in  it  an  inner  meaning.  He  moved  toward  her 
again,  and  took  her  passive  hands  in  his. 

"You  look  tired.     Why  do  you  ride  so  late?" 

"Oh,  I  just  wanted  to  give  Impulse  a  gallop.  I 
hadn't  time  to  take  her  out  earlier,  and  if  I  let  the 
grooms  exercise  her  they'll  spoil  her  mouth." 

Amherst  frowned.     "You  ought  not  to  ride  that  mare 
alone  at  night.     She  shies  at  everything  after  dark." 
[  267  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"She's  the  only  horse  I  care  for — the  others  are  all 
cows,"  she  murmured,  releasing  her  hands  impatiently. 

"Well,  you  must  take  me  with  you  the  next  time  you 
ride  her." 

She  softened  a  little,  in  spite  of  herself.  Riding  was 
the  only  amusement  he  cared  to  share  with  her,  and  the 
thought  of  a  long  gallop  across  the  plains  at  his  side 
brought  back  the  warmth  to  her  veins. 

"Yes,  we'll  go  tomorrow.  How  long  do  you  mean 
to  stay  ? "  she  asked,  looking  up  at  him  eagerly. 

He  was  pleased  that  she  should  wish  to  know,  yet 
the  question  embarrassed  him,  for  it  was  necessary  that 
he  should  be  back  at  Westmore  within  three  days,  and 
he  could  not  put  her  off  with  an  evasion. 

Bessy  saw  his  hesitation,  and  her  colour  rose  again. 
"I  only  asked,"  she  explained,  "because  there  is  to 
be  a  fancy  ball  at  the  Hunt  Club  on  the  twentieth, 
and  I  thought  of  giving  a  big  dinner  here  first." 

Amherst  did  not  understand  that  she  too  had  her  in- 
articulate moments,  and  that  the  allusion  to  the  fancy 
ball  was  improvised  to  hide  an  eagerness  to  which 
he  had  been  too  slow  in  responding.  He  thought  she 
had  enquired  about  his  plans  only  that  he  might  not 
again  interfere  with  the  arrangements  of  her  dinner- 
table.  If  that  was  all  she  cared  about,  it  became  sud- 
denly easy  to  tell  her  that  he  could  not  stay,  and  he 
answered  lightly:  "Fancy  balls  are  a  little  out  of  my 
[  268  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

line;  but  at  any  rate  I  shall  have  to  be  back  at  the  mills 
the  day  after  tomorrow." 

The  disappointment  brought  a  rush  of  bitterness  to 
her  lips.  "The  day  after  tomorrow?  It  seems  hardly 
worth  while  to  have  come  so  far  for  two  days!" 

"Oh,  I  don't  mind  the  journey — and  there  are  one 
or  two  matters  I  must  consult  you  about." 

There  could  hardly  have  been  a  more  ill-advised 
answer,  but  Amherst  was  reckless  now.  If  she  cared 
for  his  coming  only  that  he  might  fill  a  place  at  a  fancy- 
dress  dinner,  he  would  let  her  see  that  he  had  come  only 
because  he  had  to  go  through  the  form  of  submitting  to 
her  certain  measures  to  be  taken  at  Westmore. 

Bessy  was  beginning  to  feel  the  physical  reaction  of 
her  struggle  with  the  mare.  The  fatigue  which  at  first 
had  deadened  her  nerves  now  woke  them  to  acuter  sen- 
sibility, and  an  appealing  word  from  her  husband 
would  have  drawn  her  to  his  arms.  But  his  answer 
seemed  to  drive  all  the  blood  back  to  her  heart. 

"I  don't  see  why  you  still  go  through  the  form  of 
consulting  me  about  Westmore,  when  you  have  always 
done  just  as  you  pleased  there,  without  regard  to  me 
or  Cicely." 

Amherst  made  no  answer,  silenced  by  the  discourage- 
ment of  hearing  the  same  old  grievance  on  her  lips; 
and  she  too  seemed  struck,  after  she  had  spoken,  by 
the  unprofitableness  of  such  retorts. 
[  269  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"It  doesn't  matter — of  course  I'll  do  whatever  you 
wish,"  she  went  on  listlessly.  "But  I  could  have  sent 
my  signature,  if  that  is  all  you  came  for " 

"Thanks,"  said  Amherst  coldly.  "I  shall  remember 
that  the  next  time." 

They  stood  silent  for  a  moment,  he  with  his  eyes  fixed 
on  her,  she  with  averted  head,  twisting  her  riding-whip 
between  her  fingers;  then  she  said  suddenly:  "We 
shall  be  late  for  dinner,"  and  passing  into  her  dressing- 
i-oom  she  closed  the  door. 

Amherst  roused  himself  as  she  disappeared. 

"Bessy!"  he  exclaimed,  moving  toward  her;  but  as 
he  approached  the  door  he  heard  her  maid's  voice 
within,  and  turning  away  he  went  to  his  own  room 

Bessy  came  down  late  to  dinner,  with  vivid  cheeks  and 
an  air  of  improvised  ease;  and  the  manner  of  her  en- 
trance, combined  with  her  husband's  unannounced 
arrival,  produced  in  their  observant  guests  the  sense  of 
latent  complications.  Mr.  Langhope,  though  evidently 
unaware  of  his  son-in-law's  return  till  they  greeted  each 
other  in  the  drawing-room,  was  too  good  a  card-player 
to  betray  surprise,  and  Mrs.  Ansell  outdid  herself  in 
the  delicate  art  of  taking  everything  for  granted;  but 
these  very  dissimulations  sharpened  the  perception  of 
the  other  guests,  whom  long  practice  had  rendered 
expert  in  interpreting  such  signs. 
[  270  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Of  all  this  Justine  Brent  was  aware;  and  conscious 
also  that,  by  every  one  but  herself,  the  suspected  es- 
trangement between  the  Amhersts  was  regarded  as 
turning  merely  on  the  question  of  money.  To  the 
greater  number  of  persons  present  there  was,  in  fact, 
no  other  conceivable  source  of  conjugal  discord,  since 
every  known  complication  could  be  adjusted  by  means 
of  the  universal  lubricant.  It  was  this  unanimity  of 
view  which  bound  together  in  the  compactness  of  a 
new  feudalism  the  members  of  Bessy  Amherst's  world ; 
which  supplied  them  with  their  pass-words  and  social 
tests,  and  defended  them  securely  against  the  insidious 
attack  of  ideas 

The  Genius  of  History,  capriciously  directing  the  antics 
of  its  marionettes,  sometimes  lets  the  drama  languish 
through  a  series  of  unrelated  episodes,  and  then,  sud- 
denly quickening  the  pace,  packs  into  one  scene  the 
stuff  of  a  dozen.  The  chance  meeting  of  Amherst  and 
Justine,  seemingly  of  no  significance  to  either,  con- 
tained the  germ  of  developments  of  which  both  had 
begun  to  be  aware  before  the  evening  was  over.  Their 
short  talk — the  first  really  intimate  exchange  of  words 
between  them — had  the  effect  of  creating  a  sense  of 
solidarity  that  grew  apace  in  the  atmosphere  of  the 
Lynbrook  dinner-table. 

Justine  was  always  reluctant  to  take  part  in  Bessy's 
[  271  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

week-end  dinners,  but  as  she  descended  the  stairs  that 
evening  she  did  not  regret  having  promised  to  be 
present.  She  frankly  wanted  to  see  Amherst  again — 
his  tone,  his  view  of  life,  reinforced  her  own  convictions, 
restored  her  faith  in  the  reality  and  importance  of  all 
that  Lynbrook  ignored  and  excluded.  Her  extreme 
sensitiveness  to  surrounding  vibrations  of  thought  and 
feeling  told  her,  as  she  glanced  at  him  between  the 
flowers  and  candles  of  the  long  dinner-table,  that  he 
too  was  obscurely  aware  of  the  same  effect;  and  it 
flashed  across  her  that  they  were  unconsciously  drawn 
together  by  the  fact  that  they  were  the  only  two  strangers 
in  the  room.  Every  one  else  had  the  same  standpoint, 
spoke  the  same  language,  drew  on  the  same  stock  of 
allusions,  used  the  same  weights  and  measures  in  esti- 
mating persons  and  actions.  Between  Mr.  Langhope's 
indolent  acuteness  of  mind  and  the  rudimentary  proc- 
esses of  the  rosy  Telfers  there  was  a  difference  of 
degree  but  not  of  kind.  If  Mr.  Langhope  viewed  the 
spectacle  more  objectively,  it  was  not  because  he  had 
outlived  the  sense  of  its  importance,  but  because  years 
of  experience  had  familiarized  him  with  its  minutest 
details;  and  this  familiarity  with  the  world  he  lived  in 
had  bred  a  profound  contempt  for  any  other. 

In  no  way  could  the  points  of  contact  between  Am- 
herst and  Justine  Brent  have  been  more  vividly  brought 
out  than  by  their  tacit  exclusion  from  the  currents  of 
[  272  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

opinion  about  them.  Amherst,  seated  in  unsmiling  en- 
durance at  the  foot  of  the  table,  between  Mrs.  Ansell, 
with  her  carefully-distributed  affabilities,  and  Blanche 
Carbury,  with  her  reckless  hurling  of  conversational 
pebbles,  seemed  to  Justine  as  much  of  a  stranger  as 
herself  among  the  people  to  whom  his  marriage  had 
introduced  him.  So  strongly  jlid  she  feel  the  sense  of 
their  common  isolation  that  it  was  no  surprise  to  her, 
when  the  men  reappeared  in  the  drawing-room  after 
dinner,  to  have  her  host  thread  his  way,  between  the 
unfolding  bridge-tables,  straight  to  the  corner  where 
she  sat.  Amherst's  methods  in  the  drawing-room  were 
still  as  direct  as  in  the  cotton-mill.  He  always  went  up 
at  once  to  the  person  he  sought,  without  preliminary 
waste  of  tactics;  and  on  this  occasion  Justine,  without 
knowing  what  had  passed  between  himself  and  Bessy, 
suspected  from  the  appearance  of  both  that  their  talk 
had  resulted  in  increasing  Amherst's  desire  to  be  with 
some  one  to  whom  he  could  speak  freely  and  naturally 
on  the  subject  nearest  his  heart. 

She  began  at  once  to  question  him  about  Westmore, 
and  the  change  in  his  face  showed  that  his  work  was 
still  a  refuge  from  all  that  made  life  disheartening  and 
unintelligible.  Whatever  convictions  had  been  thwarted 
or  impaired  in  him,  his  faith  in  the  importance  of  his 
task  remained  unshaken;  and  the  firmness  with  which 
he  held  to  it  filled  Justine  with  a  sense  of  his  strength. 
[  273  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

The  feeling  kindled  her  own  desire  to  escape  again  into 
the  world  of  deeds,  yet  by  a  sudden  reaction  it  checked 
the  growing  inclination  for  Stephen  Wyant  that  had 
resulted  from  her  revolt  against  Lynbrook.  Here  was 
a  man  as  careless  as  Wyant  of  the  minor  forms,  yet 
her  appreciation  of  him  was  not  affected  by  the  lack  of 
adaptability  that  she  accused  herself  of  criticizing  in 
her  suitor.  She  began  to  see  that  it  was  not  the  sense 
of  Wyant's  social  deficiencies  that  had  held  her  back; 
and  the  discovery  at  once  set  free  her  judgment  of  him, 
enabling  her  to  penetrate  to  the  real  causes  of  her 
reluctance.  She  understood  now  that  the  flaw  she  felt 
was  far  deeper  than  any  defect  of  manner.  It  was  the 
sense  in  him  of  something  unstable  and  incalculable, 
something  at  once  weak  and  violent,  that  was  brought 
to  light  by  the  contrast  of  Amherst's  quiet  resolution. 
Here  was  a  man  whom  no  gusts  of  chance  could  deflect 
from  his  purpose;  while  she  felt  that  the  career  to 
which  Wyant  had  so  ardently  given  himself  would 
always  be  at  the  mercy  of  his  passing  emotions. 

As  the  distinction  grew  clearer,  Justine  trembled  to 
think  that  she  had  so  nearly  pledged  herself,  with- 
6ut  the  excuse  of  love,  to  a  man  whose  failings  she 
could  judge  so  lucidly.  .  .  But  had  she  ever  really 
thought  of  marrying  Wyant  ?  While  she  continued  to 
talk  with  Amherst  such  a  possibility  became  more  and 
more  remote,  till  she  began  to  feel  it  was  no  more 
[274  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

than  a  haunting  dream.  But  her  promise  to  see  Wyant 
the  next  day  reminded  her  of  the  nearness  of  her  peril. 
How  could  she  have  played  with  her  fate  so  lightly— 
she,  who  held  her  life  so  dear  because  she  felt  in  it  such 
untried  powers  of  action  and  emotion  ?  She  continued  to 
listen  to  Amherst's  account  of  his  work,  with  enough 
outward  self-possession  to  place  the  right  comment 
and  put  the  right  question,  yet  conscious  only  of  the 
quiet  strength  she  was  absorbing  from  his  presence,  of 
the  way  in  which  his  words,  his  voice,  his  mere  near- 
ness were  slowly  steadying  and  clarifying  her  will. 

In  the  smoking-room,  after  the  ladies  had  gone  up- 
stairs, Amherst  continued  to  acquit  himself  mechani- 
cally of  his  duties,  against  the  incongruous  back-ground 
of  his  predecessor's  remarkable  sporting-prints — for  it 
was  characteristic  of  his  relation  to  Lynbrook  that  his 
life  there  was  carried  on  in  the  setting  of  foils  and  box- 
ing-gloves, firearms  and  racing-trophies,  which  had  ex- 
pressed Dick  Westmore's  ideals.  Never  very  keenly 
alive  to  his  material  surroundings,  and  quite  uncon- 
scious of  the  irony  of  this  proximity,  Amherst  had  come 
to  accept  his  wife's  guests  as  unquestioningly  as  their 
background,  and  with  the  same  sense  of  their  being  an 
inevitable  part  of  his  new  life.  Their  talk  was  no  more 
intelligible  to  him  than  the  red  and  yellow  hieroglyphics 
of  the  racing-prints,  and  he  smoked  in  silence  while  Mr. 
langhope  discoursed  to  Westy  Gaines  on  the  recent 
[  275  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

sale  of  Chinese  porcelains  at  which  he  had  been  lucky 
enough  to  pick  up  the  set  of  Ming  for  his  daughter,  and 
Mason  Winch  expounded  to  a  group  of  languid  lis- 
teners the  essential  dependence  of  the  labouring-man 
on  the  prosperity  of  Wall  Street.  In  a  retired  corner, 
Ned  Bowfort  was  imparting  facts  of  a  more  personal 
nature  to  a  chosen  following  who  hailed  with  sup- 
pressed enjoyment  the  murmured  mention  of  proper 
names;  and  now  and  then  Amherst  found  himself 
obliged  to  say  to  Fenton  Carbury,  who  with  one  accord 
had  been  left  on  his  hands,  "Yes,  I  understand  the 
flat-tread  tire  is  best,"  or,  "There's  a  good  deal  to  be 
said  for  the  low  tension  magneto " 

But  all  the  while  his  conscious  thoughts  were  ab- 
sorbed in  the  remembrance  of  his  talk  with  Justine 
Brent.  He  had  left  his  wife's  presence  in  that  state  of 
moral  lassitude  when  the  strongest  hopes  droop  under 
the  infection  of  indifference  and  hostility,  and  the  effort 
of  attainment  seems  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  end 
in  view;  but  as  he  listened  to  Justine  all  his  energies 
sprang  to  life  again.  Here  at  last  was  some  one  who 
felt  the  urgency  of  his  task :  her  every  word  and  look 
confirmed  her  comment  of  the  afternoon:  "West- 
more  must  be  foremost  to  you  both  in  time — I  don't 
see  how  either  of  you  can  escape  it." 

She  saw  it,  as  he  did,  to  be  the  special  outlet  offered 
for  the  expression  of  what  he  was  worth  to  the  world; 
[  276  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

and  with  the  knowledge  that  one  other  person  recog- 
nized his  call,  it  sounded  again  loudly  in  his  heart.  Yes, 
he  would  go  on,  patiently  and  persistently,  conquering 
obstacles,  suffering  delay,  enduring  criticism — hardest 
of  all,  bearing  with  his  wife's  deepening  indifference  and 
distrust.  Justine  had  said  "Westmore  must  be  fore- 
most to  you  both,"  and  he  would  prove  that  she  was 
right — spite  of  the  powers  leagued  against  him  he  would 
win  over  Bessy  in  the  end ! 

Those  observers  who  had  been  struck  by  the  length 
and  animation  of  Miss  Brent's  talk  with  her  host — and 
among  whom  Mrs.  Ansell  and  Westy  Gaines  were  fore- 
most— would  hardly  have  believed  how  small  a  part 
her  personal  charms  had  played  in  attracting  him. 
Amherst  was  still  under  the  power  of  the  other  kind  of 
beauty — the  soft  graces  personifying  the  first  triumph 
of  sex  in  his  heart — and  Justine's  dark  slenderness 
could  not  at  once  dispel  the  milder  image.  He  watched 
her  with  pleasure  while  she  talked,  but  her  face  inter- 
ested him  only  as  the  vehicle  of  her  ideas — she  looked 
as  a  girl  must  look  who  felt  and  thought  as  she  did. 
He  was  aware  that  everything  about  her  was  quick  and 
fine  and  supple,  and  that  the  muscles  of  character  lay 
close  to  the  surface  of  feeling;  but  the  interpenetration 
of  spirit  and  flesh  that  made  her  body  seem  like  the 
bright  projection  of  her  mind  left  him  unconscious 
of  anything  but  the  oneness  of  their  thoughts. 
[  277  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

So  these  two,  in  their  hour  of  doubt,  poured  strength 
into  each  other's  hearts,  each  unconscious  of  what  they 
gave,  and  of  its  hidden  power  of  renewing  their  own 
purposes. 

XVIII 

IF  Mr.  Langhope  had  ever  stooped  to  such  facile 
triumphs  as  that  summed  up  in  the  convenient 
"I  told  you  so,"  he  would  have  loosed  the  phrase  on 
Mrs.  Ansell  in  the  course  of  a  colloquy  which  these  two, 
the  next  afternoon,  were  at  some  pains  to  defend  from 
the  incursions  of  the  Lynbrook  house- party. 

Mrs.  Ansell  was  the  kind  of  woman  who  could  en- 
circle herself  with  privacy  on  an  excursion-boat  and 
create  a  nook  in  an  hotel  drawing-room,  but  it  taxed 
even  her  ingenuity  to  segregate  herself  from  the  Telfers. 
When  the  feat  was  accomplished,  and  it  became  evident 
that  Mr.  Langhope  could  yield  himself  securely  to  the 
joys  of  confidential  discourse,  he  paused  on  the  brink 
of  disclosure  to  say:  "It's  as  well  I  saved  that  Ming 
from  the  ruins." 

"  What  ruins  ?  "  she  exclaimed,  her  startled  look  giv- 
ing him  the  full  benefit  of  the  effect  he  was  seeking  to 
produce. 

He  addressed  himself  deliberately  to  the  selecting 
and  lighting  of  a  cigarette.  "Truscomb  is  down  and 
out — resigned,  'the  wise  it  call.'  And  the  alterations 
[  278  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

at  Westmore  are  going  to  cost  a  great  deal  more  than 
my  experienced  son-in-law  expected.  This  is  Westy's 
morning  budget — he  and  Amherst  had  it  out  last  night. 
I  tell  my  poor  girl  that  at  least  she'll  lose  nothing  when 
the  bibelots  I've  bought  for  her  go  up  the  spout." 

Mrs.  Ansell  received  this  with  a  troubled  counten- 
ance. "What  has  become  of  Bessy?  I've  not  seen 
her  since  luncheon." 

"No.  She  and  Blanche  Carbury  have  motored  over 
to  dine  with  the  Nick  Ledgers  at  Islip." 

"Did  you  see  her  before  she  left?" 

"For  a  moment,  but  she  said  very  little.  Westy  tells 
me  that  Amherst  hints  at  leasing  the  New  York  house. 
One  can  understand  that  she's  left  speechless." 

Mrs.  Ansell,  at  this,  sat  bolt  upright.  "The  New 
York  house  ?  "  But  she  broke  off  to  add,  with  seeming 
irrelevance:  "If  you  knew  how  I  detest  Blanche  Car- 
bury!" 

Mr.  Langhope  made  a  gesture  of  semi-acquiescence. 
"She  is  not  the  friend  I  should  have  chosen  for  Bessy 
— but  we  know  that  Providence  makes  use  of  strange 
instruments." 

"Providence  and  Blanche  Carbury?"  She  stared  at 
him.  "Ah,  you  are  profoundly  corrupt!" 

"I  have  the  coarse  masculine  habit  of  looking  facts 
>n  the  face.  Woman-like,  you  prefer  to  make  use  of 
them  privately,  and  cut  them  when  you  meet  in  public." 
[*  279  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Blanche  is  not  the  kind  of  fact  I  should  care  to 
make  use  of  under  any  circumstances  whatever!" 

"No  one  asks  you  to.  Simply  regard  her  as  a  force  of 
nature — let  her  alone,  and  don't  put  up  too  many 
lightning-rods." 

She  raised  her  eyes  to  his  face.  "Do  you  really 
mean  that  you  want  Bessy  to  get  a  divorce?" 

"Your  style  is  elliptical,  dear  Maria ;  but  divorce 
does  not  frighten  me  very  much.  It  has  grown  almost 
as  painless  as  modern  dentistry." 

"It's  our  odious  insensibility  that  makes  it  so!" 

Mr.  Langhope  received  this  with  the  mildness  of  sus- 
pended judgment.  "How  else,  then,  do  you  propose 
that  Bessy  shall  save  what  is  left  of  her  money?" 

"I  would  rather  see  her  save  what  is  left  of  her 
happiness.  Bessy  will  never  be  happy  in  the  new 
way." 

"What  do  you  call  the  new  way?" 

"Launching  one's  boat  over  a  human  body — or  sev- 
eral, as  the  case  may  be!" 

"But  don't  you  see  that,  as  an  expedient  to  bring  this 
madman  to  reason " 

"I've  told  you  that  you  don't  understand  him!" 

Mr.  Langhope  turned  on  her  with  what  would  have 
been  a  show  of  temper  in  any  one  less  provided  with 
shades  of  manner.  "Well,  then,  explain  him,  for  God's 
sake!" 

[  280  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

*'I  might  explain  him  by  saying  that  she's  still  in  love 
with  him." 

"Ah,  if  you're  still  imprisoned  in  the  old  formulas!" 

Mrs.  Ansell  confronted  him  with  a  grave  face.  "Isn't 
that  precisely  what  Bessy  is  ?  Isn't  she  one  of  the  most 
harrowing  victims  of  the  plan  of  bringing  up  our  girls 
in  the  double  bondage  of  expediency  and  unreality, 
corrupting  their  bodies  with  luxury  and  their  brains 
with  sentiment,  and  leaving  them  to  reconcile  the  two 
as  best  they  can,  or  lose  their  souls  in  the  attempt?" 

Mr.  Langhope  smiled.  "I  may  observe  that,  with 
my  poor  child  so  early  left  alone  to  me,  I  supposed  I 
was  doing  my  best  in  committing  her  guidance  to  some 
of  the  most  admirable  women  I  know." 

"Of  whom  I  was  one — and  not  the  least  lamentable 
example  of  the  system!  Of  course  the  only  thing  that 
saves  us  from  their  vengeance,"  Mrs.  Ansell  added, 
"is  that  so  few  of  them  ever  stop  to  think.  .  ." 

"And  yet,  as  I  make  out,  it's  precisely  what  you 
would  have  Bessy  do!" 

"It's  what  neither  you  nor  I  can  help  her  doing. 
You've  given  her  just  acuteness  enough  to  question, 
without  consecutiveness  enough  to  explain.  But  if  she 
must  perish  in  the  struggle — and  I  see  no  hope  for 
her — "  cried  Mrs.  Ansell,  starting  suddenly  and  dram- 
atically to  her  feet,  "at  least  let  her  perish  defending 
her  ideals  and  not  denying  them — even  if  she  has  to 
[281  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

sell  the  New  York  house  and  all  your  china  pots  into 
the  bargain!" 

Mr.  Langhope,  rising  also,  deprecatingly  lifted  his 
hands,  "If  that's  what  you  call  saving  me  from  her 
vengeance — sending  the  crockery  crashing  round  my 
ears!"  And,  as  she  turned  away  without  any  pretense 
of  capping  his  pleasantry,  he  added,  with  a  gleam  of 
friendly  malice:  "I  suppose  you're  going  to  the  Hunt 
ball  as  Cassandra?" 

Amherst,  that  morning,  had  sought  out  his  wife  with  the 
definite  resolve  to  efface  the  unhappy  impression  of  their 
previous  talk.  He  blamed  himself  for  having  been  too 
easily  repelled  by  her  impatience.  As  the  stronger  of  the 
two,  with  the  power  of  a  fixed  purpose  to  sustain  him,  he 
should  have  allowed  for  the  instability  of  her  impulses, 
and  above  all  for  the  automatic  influences  of  habit. 

Knowing  that  she  did  not  keep  early  hours  he  de- 
layed till  ten  o'clock  to  present  himself  at  her  sitting- 
room  door,  but  the  maid  who  answered  his  knock  in- 
formed him  that  Mrs.  Amherst  was  not  yet  up. 

His  reply  that  he  would  wait  did  not  appear  to  hasten 
the  leisurely  process  of  her  toilet,  and  he  had  the  room 
to  himself  for  a  full  half-hour.  Many  months  had 
passed  since  he  had  spent  so  long  a  time  in  it,  and 
though  habitually  unobservant  of  external  details,  he 
now  found  an  outlet  for  his  restlessness  in  mechanically 
[  282  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

noting  the  intimate  appurtenances  of  Bessy's  life.  He 
was  at  first  merely  conscious  of  a  soothing  harmony  of 
line  and  colour,  extending  from  the  blurred  tints  of  the 
rug  to  the  subdued  gleam  of  light  on  old  picture-frames 
and  on  the  slender  flanks  of  porcelain  vases;  but  gradu- 
ally he  began  to  notice  how  every  chair  and  screen  and 
cushion,  and  even  every  trifling  utensil  on  the  inlaid 
writing-desk,  had  been  chosen  with  reference  to  the 
whole  composition,  and  to  the  minutest  requirements 
of  a  fastidious  leisure.  A  few  months  ago  this  soidied 
setting,  if  he  had  thought  of  it  at  all,  would  have  justi- 
fied itself  as  expressing  the  pretty  woman's  natural 
affinity  with  pretty  toys;  but  now  it  was  the  cost  of  it 
that  struck  him.  He  was  beginning  to  learn  from 
Bessy's  bills  that  no  commodity  is  taxed  as  high  as 
beauty,  and  the  beauty  about  him  filled  him  with  sud- 
den repugnance,  as  the  disguise  of  the  evil  influences 
that  were  separating  his  wife's  life  from  his. 

But  with  her  entrance  he  dismissed  the  thought,  and 
tried  to  meet  her  as  if  nothing  stood  in  the  way  of  their 
full  communion.  Her  hair,  still  wet  from  the  bath, 
broke  from  its  dryad-like  knot  in  dusky  rings  and 
spirals  threaded  with  gold,  and  from  her  loose  flexible 
draperies,  and  her  whole  person  as  she  moved,  there 
came  a  scent  of  youth  and  morning  freshness.  Her 
beauty  touched  him,  and  made  it  easier  for  him  to 
humble  himself. 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I  was  stupid  and  disagreeable  last  night.  I  can 
never  say  what  I  want  when  I  have  to  count  the  min- 
utes, and  I've  come  back  now  for  a  quiet  talk,"  he 
began. 

A  shade  of  distrust  passed  over  Bessy's  face.  "  About 
business  ?  "  she  asked,  pausing  a  few  feet  away  from  him. 

"Don't  let  us  give  it  that  name!"  He  went  up  to 
her  and  drew  her  two  hands  into  his.  "You  used  to 
call  it  our  work — won't  you  go  back  to  that  way  of 
looking  at  it?" 

Her  hands  resisted  his  pressure.  "I  didn't  know, 
then,  that  it  was  going  to  be  the  only  thing  you  cared 
for ': 

But  for  her  own  sake  he  would  not  let  her  go  on. 
"Some  day  I  shall  make  you  see  how  much  my  caring 
for  it  means  my  caring  for  you.  But  meanwhile,"  he 
urged,  "won't  you  overcome  your  aversion  to  the  sub- 
ject, and  bear  with  it  as  my  work,  if  you  no  longer  care 
to  think  of  it  as  yours  ?  " 

Bessy,  freeing  herself,  sat  down  on  the  edge  of  the 
straight-backed  chair  near  the  desk,  as  though  to  mark 
the  parenthetical  nature  of  the  interview. 

"I  know  you  think  me  stupid — but  wives  are  not 
usually  expected  to  go  into  all  the  details  of  their  hus- 
band's business.  I  have  told  you  to  do  whatever  you 
wish  at  Westmore,  and  I  can't  see  why  that  is  not 
enough." 

[  284  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Amherst  looked  at  her  in  surprise.  Something  in 
her  quick  mechanical  utterance  suggested  that  not  only 
the  thought  but  the  actual  words  she  spoke  had  been 
inspired,  and  he  fancied  he  heard  in  them  an  echo  of 
Blanche  Carbury's  tones.  Though  Bessy's  intimacy 
with  Mrs.  Carbury  was  of  such  recent  date,  fragments 
of  unheeded  smoking-room  gossip  now  recurred  to  con- 
firm the  vague  antipathy  which  Amherst  had  felt  for 
her  the  previous  evening. 

t  "I  know  that,  among  your  friends,  wives  are  not 
expected  to  interest  themselves  in  their  husbands'  work, 
and  if  the  mills  were  mine  I  should  try  to  conform  to 
the  custom,  though  I  should  always  think  it  a  pity  that 
the  questions  that  fill  a  man's  thoughts  should  be  ruled 
out  of  his  talk  with  his  wife;  but  as  it  is,  I  am  only 
your  representative  at  Westmore,  and  I  don't  see  how 
we  can  help  having  the  subject  come  up  between  us." 

Bessy  remained  silent,  not  as  if  acquiescing  in  his 
plea,  but  as  though  her  own  small  stock  of  arguments 
had  temporarily  failed  her;  and  he  went  on,  enlarging 
on  his  theme  with  a  careful  avoidance  of  technical 
terms,  and  with  the  constant  effort  to  keep  the  human 
and  personal  side  of  the  question  before  her. 

She  listened  without  comment,  her  eyes  fixed  on  a 
little  jewelled  letter-opener  which  she  had  picked  up 
from  the  writing-table,  and  which  she  continued  to 
turn  in  her  fingers  while  he  spoke. 
[285] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

The  full  development  of  Amherst's  plans  at  West- 
more,  besides  resulting,  as  he  had  foreseen,  in  Trus- 
comb's  resignation,  and  in  Halford  Gaines's  outspoken 
resistance  to  the  new  policy,  had  necessitated  a  larger 
immediate  outlay  of  capital  than  the  first  estimates 
demanded,  and  Amherst,  in  putting  his  case  to  Bessy, 
was  prepared  to  have  her  meet  it  on  the  old  ground 
of  the  disapproval  of  all  her  advisers.  But  when 
he  had  ended  she  merely  said,  without  looking  up 
from  the  toy  in  her  hand:  "I  always  expected  that 
you  would  need  a  great  deal  more  money  than  you 
thought." 

The  comment  touched  him  at  his  most  vulnerable 
point.  "But  you  see  why?  You  understand  how  the 
work  has  gone  on  growing — ?" 

His  wife  lifted  her  head  to  glance  at  him  for  a  mo- 
ment. "I  am  not  sure  that  I  understand,"  she  said 
indifferently;  "but  if  another  loan  is  necessary,  of 
course  I  will  sign  the  note  for  it." 

The  words  checked  his  reply  by  bringing  up,  before 
he  was  prepared  to  deal  with  it,  the  other  and  more 
embarrassing  aspect  of  the  question.  He  had  hoped 
to  reawaken  in  Bessy  some  feeling  for  the  urgency  of 
his  task  before  having  to  take  up  the  subject  of  its 
cost;  but  her  cold  anticipation  of  his  demands  as  part 
of  a  disagreeable  business  to  be  despatched  and  put 
out  of  mind,  doubled  the  difficulty  of  what  he  had  left 
[  286  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

to  say;  and  it  occurred  to  him  that  she  had  perhaps 
foreseen  and  reckoned  on  this  result. 

He  met  her  eyes  gravely.  "Another  loan  is  neces- 
sary; but  if  any  proper  provision  is  to  be  made  for 
paying  it  back,  your  expenses  will  have  to  be  cut  down 
a  good  deal  for  the  next  few  months." 

The  blood  leapt  to  Bessy's  face.  "My  expenses? 
You  seem  to  forget  how  much  I've  had  to  cut  them 
down  already." 

"The  household  bills  certainly  don't  show  it.  They 
are  increasing  steadily,  and  there  have  been  some  very 
heavy  incidental  payments  lately." 

"What  do  you  mean  by  incidental  payments?" 

"Well,  there  was  the  pair  of  cobs  you  bought  last 
month " 

She  returned  to  a  resigned  contemplation  of  the  letter- 
opener.  "With  only  one  motor,  one  must  have  more 
horses,  of  course." 

"The  stables  seemed  to  me  fairly  full  before.  But 
if  you  required  more  horses,  I  don't  see  why,  at  this 
particular  moment,  it  was  also  necessary  to  buy  a  set  of 
Chinese  vases  for  twenty-five  hundred  dollars." 

Bessy,  at  this,  lifted  her  head  with  an  air  of  decision 
that  surprised  him.  Her  blush  had  faded  as  quickly 
as  it  came,  and  he  noticed  that  she  was  pale  to  the  lips. 

"I  know  you  don't  care  about  such  things;  but  I 
had  an  exceptional  chance  of  securing  the  vases  at  a 
[  287  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

low  price — they  are  really  worth  twice  as  much — and 
Dick  always  wanted  a  set  of  Ming  for  the  drawing- 
room  mantelpiece." 

Richard  Westmore's  name  was  always  tacitly  avoided 
between  them,  for  in  Amherst's  case  the  disagreeable 
sense  of  dependence  on  a  dead  man's  bounty  increased 
that  feeling  of  obscure  constraint  and  repugnance  which 
any  reminder  of  the  first  husband's  existence  is  wont 
to  produce  in  his  successor. 

He  reddened  at  the  reply,  and  Bessy,  profiting  by  an 
embarrassment  which  she  had  perhaps  consciously 
provoked,  went  on  hastily,  and  as  if  by  rote:  "I  have 
left  you  perfectly  free  to  do  as  you  think  best  at  the 
mills,  but  this  perpetual  discussion  of  my  personal  ex- 
penses is  very  unpleasant  to  me,  as  I  am  sure  it  must  be 
to  you,  and  in  future  I  think  it  would  be  much  better 
for  us  to  have  separate  accounts." 

"Separate  accounts?"  Amherst  echoed  in  genuine 
astonishment. 

"I  should  like  my  personal  expenses  to  be  under  my 
own  control  again — I  have  never  been  used  to  account- 
ing for  every  penny  I  spend." 

The  vertical  lines  deepened  between  Amherst's  brows. 
"You  are  of  course  free  to  spend  your  money  as  you 
like — and  I  thought  you  were  doing  so  when  you  au- 
thorized me,  last  spring,  to  begin  the  changes  at  West- 
more." 

[  288  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Her  lip  trembled.  "Do  you  reproach  me  for  that  ? 
I  didn't  understand.  .  .  you  took  advantage.  .  ." 

"Oh!"  he  exclaimed. 

At  his  tone  the  blood  rushed  back  to  her  face.  "It 
was  my  fault,  of  course —  I  only  wanted  to  please 
you " 

Amherst  was  silent,  confronted  by  the  sudden  sense 
of  his  own  responsibility.  What  she  said  was  true — 
he  had  known,  when  he  exacted  the  sacrifice,  that  she 
made  it  only  to  please  him,  on  an  impulse  of  reawakened 
feeling,  and  not  from  any  real  recognition  of  a  larger 
duty.  The  perception  of  this  made  him  answer  gently: 
"I  am  willing  to  take  any  blame  you  think  I  deserve;  but 
it  won't  help  us  now  to  go  back  to  the  past.  It  is  more 
important  that  we  should  come  to  an  understanding 
about  the  future.  If  by  keeping  your  personal  account 
separate,  you  mean  that  you  wish  to  resume  control  of 
your  whole  income,  then  you  ought  to  understand  that 
the  improvements  at  the  mills  will  have  to  be  dropped 
at  once,  and  things  there  go  back  to  their  old  state." 

She  started  up  with  an  impatient  gesture.  "Oh,  I 
should  like  never  to  hear  of  the  mills  again ! " 

He  looked  at  her  a  moment  In  silence.  "Am  I  to 
take  that  as  your  answer?" 

She  walked  toward  her  door  without  returning  his 
look.  "Of  course,"  she  murmured,  "you  will  end  by 
doing  as  you  please." 

[  289  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

The  retort  moved  him,  for  he  heard  in  it  the  cry  of 
her  wounded  pride.  He  longed  to  be  able  to  cry  out 
in  return  that  Westmore  was  nothing  to  him,  that 
all  he  asked  was  to  see  her  happy.  .  .  But  it  was 
not  true,  and  his  manhood  revolted  from  the  decep- 
tion. Besides,  its  effect  would  be  only  temporary — 
would  wear  no  better  than  her  vain  efforts  to  simulate 
an  interest  in  his  work.  Between  them,  forever,  were 
the  insurmountable  barriers  of  character,  of  education, 
of  habit — and  yet  it  was  not  in  him  to  believe  that  any 
barrier  was  insurmountable. 

"Bessy,"  he  exclaimed,  following  her,  "don't  let  us 
part  in  this  way — 

She  paused  with  her  hand  on  her  dressing-room  door. 
"It  is  time  to  dress  for  church,"  she  objected,  turning 
to  glance  at  the  little  gilt  clock  on  the  chimney-piece. 

"For  church?"  Amherst  stared,  wondering  that  at 
such  a  crisis  she  should  have  remained  detached  enough 
to  take  note  of  the  hour. 

"You  forget,"  she  replied,  with  an  air  of  gentle  re- 
proof, "that  before  we  married  I  was  in  the  habit  of 
going  to  church  every  Sunday." 

"Yes — to  be  sure.  Would  you  not  like  me  to  go 
with  you?"  he  rejoined  gently,  as  if  roused  to  the  con- 
sciousness of  another  omission  in  the  long  list  of  his 
social  shortcomings;  for  church-going,  at  Lynbrook, 
had  always  struck  him  as  a  purely  social  observance. 
[  290  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

But  Bessy  had  opened  the  door  of  her  dressing-room. 
"I  much  prefer  that  you  should  do  what  you  like,"  she 
said  as  she  passed  from  the  room. 

Amherst  made  no  farther  attempt  to  detain  her,  and 
the  door  closed  on  her  as  though  it  were  closing  on  a 
chapter  in  their  lives. 

"That's  the  end  of  it!"  he  murmured,  picking  up  the 
letter-opener  she  had  been  playing  with,  and  twirling 
it  absently  in  his  fingers.  But  nothing  in  life  ever  ends, 
and  the  next  moment  a  new  question  confronted  him — 
how  was  the  next  chapter  to  open  ? 


[  291  ] 


BOOK  III 
XIX 

rwas  late  in  October  when  Amherst  returned  to 
Lynbrook. 

He  had  begun  to  learn,  in  the  interval,  the  lesson 
most  difficult  to  his  direct  and  trenchant  nature:  that 
compromise  is  the  law  of  married  life.  On  the  after- 
noon of  his  talk  with  his  wife  he  had  sought  her  out, 
determined  to  make  a  final  effort  to  clear  up  the  situa- 
tion between  them;  but  he  learned  that,  immediately 
after  luncheon,  she  had  gone  off  in  the  motor  with  Mrs. 
Carbury  and  two  men  of  the  party,  leaving  word  that 
they  would  probably  not  be  back  till  evening.  It  cost 
Amherst  a  struggle,  when  he  had  humbled  himself  to 
receive  this  information  from  the  butler,  not  to  pack 
his  portmanteau  and  take  the  first  train  for  Hanaford; 
but  he  was  still  under  the  influence  of  Justine  Brent's 
words,  and  also  of  his  own  feeling  that,  at  this  juncture, 
a  break  between  himself  and  Bessy  would  be  final. 

He  stayed  on  accordingly,  enduring  as  best  he  might 
the  mute  observation  of  the  household,  and  the  gentle 
irony  of  Mr.  Langhope's  attentions;  and  before  he  left 
Lynbrook,  two  days  later,  a  provisional  understanding 
had  been  reached.  . 

[  292  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

His  wife  proved  more  firm  than  he  had  foreseen  in 
her  resolve  to  regain  control  of  her  income,  and  the 
talk  between  them  ended  in  reciprocal  concessions, 
Bessy  consenting  to  let  the  town  house  for  the  winter 
and  remain  at  Lynbrook,  while  Amherst  agreed  to  re- 
strict his  improvements  at  Westmore  to  such  altera- 
tions as  had  already  been  begun,  and  to  reduce  the 
expenditure  on  these  as  much  as  possible.  It  was  vir- 
tually the  defeat  of  his  policy,  and  he  had  to  suffer  the 
decent  triumph  of  the  Gaineses,  as  well  as  the  bitterer 
pang  of  his  foiled  aspirations.  In  spite  of  the  opposi- 
tion of  the  directors,  he  had  taken  advantage  of  Trus- 
comb's  resignation  to  put  Duplain  at  the  head  of  the 
mills;  but  the  new  manager's  outspoken  disgust  at  the 
company's  change  of  plan  made  it  clear  that  he  would 
not  remain  long  at  Westmore,  and  it  was  one  of  the 
miseries  of  Amherst's  situation  that  he  could  not  give 
the  reasons  for  his  defection,  but  must  bear  to  figure  in 
Duplain 's  terse  vocabulary  as  a  "quitter."  The  diffi- 
culty of  finding  a  new  manager  expert  enough  to  satisfy 
the  directors,  yet  in  sympathy  with  his  own  social 
theories,  made  Amherst  fear  that  Duplain 's  withdrawal 
would  open  the  way  for  Truscomb's  reinstatement,  an 
outcome  on  which  he  suspected  Halford  Gaines  had 
always  counted ;  and  this  possibility  loomed  before  him 
as  the  final  defeat  of  his  hopes. 

Meanwhile  the  issues  ahead  had  at  least  the  merit  of 
[  293  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

keeping  him  busy.  The  task  of  modifying  and  re- 
trenching his  plans  contrasted  drearily  with  the  hopeful 
activity  of  the  past  months,  but  he  had  an  iron  capacity 
for  hard  work  under  adverse  conditions,  and  the  fact  of 
being  too  busy  for  thought  helped  him  to  wear  through 
the  days.  This  pressure  of  work  relieved  him,  at  first, 
from  too  close  consideration  of  his  relation  to  Bessy. 
He  had  yielded  up  his  dearest  hopes  at  her  wish,  and 
for  the  moment  his  renunciation  had  set  a  chasm  be- 
tween them;  but  gradually  he  saw  that,  as  he  was 
patching  together  the  ruins  of  his  Westmore  plans,  so 
he  must  presently  apply  himself  to  the  reconstruction 
of  his  married  life. 

Before  leaving  Lynbrook  he  had  had  a  last  word  with 
Miss  Brent;  not  a  word  of  confidence — for  the  same 
sense  of  reserve  kept  both  from  any  explicit  renewal  of 
their  moment's  intimacy — but  one  of  those  exchanges 
of  commonplace  phrase  that  circumstances  may  be 
left  to  charge  with  special  meaning.  Justine  had 
merely  asked  if  he  were  really  leaving  and,  on  his  as- 
senting, had  exclaimed  quickly:  "But  you  will  come 
back  soon?" 

"I  shall  certainly  come  back,"  he  answered;  and 
after  a  pause  he  added:  "I  shall  find  you  here?  You 
will  remain  at  Lynbrook?" 

On  her  part  also  there  was  a  shade  of  hesitation; 
then  she  said  with  a  smile:   "Yes,  I  shall  stay." 
[  294  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

His  look  brightened.  "And  you'll  write  me  if  any- 
thing— if  Bessy  should  not  be  well  ?  " 

"I  will  write  you,"  she  promised;  and  a  few  weeks 
after  his  return  to  Hanaford  he  had,  in  fact,  received 
a  short  note  from  her.  Its  ostensible  purpose  was  to 
reassure  him  as  to  Bessy's  health,  which  had  certainly 
grown  stronger  since  Dr.  Wyant  had  persuaded  her, 
at  the  close  of  the  last  house-party,  to  accord  herself  a 
period  of  quiet;  but  (the  writer  added)  now  that  Mr. 
Langhope  and  Mrs.  Ansell  had  also  left,  the  quiet  was 
perhaps  too  complete,  and  Bessy's  nerves  were  begin- 
ning to  suffer  from  the  reaction. 

Amherst  had  no  difficulty  in  interpreting  this  brief 
communication.  "I  have  succeeded  in  dispersing  the 
people  who  are  always  keeping  you  and  your  wife 
apart;  now  is  your  chance:  come  and  take  it."  That 
was  what  Miss  Brent's  letter  meant;  and  his  answer 
was  a  telegram  to  Bessy,  announcing  his  return  to  Long 
Island. 

The  step  was  not  an  easy  one;  but  decisive  action, 
however  hard,  was  always  easier  to  Amherst  than  the 
ensuing  interval  of  readjustment.  To  come  to  Lyn- 
brook  had  required  a  strong  effort  of  will;  but  the 
effort  of  remaining  there  called  into  play  less  disciplined 
faculties. 

Amherst  had  always  been  used  to  doing  things;  now 
he  had  to  resign  himself  to  enduring  a  state  of  things. 
[  295  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

The  material  facilities  of  the  life  about  him,  the  way  in 
which  the  machinery  of  the  great  empty  house  ran  on 
like  some  complex  apparatus  working  in  the  void,  in- 
creased the  exasperation  of  his  nerves.  Dr.  Wyant's 
suggestion — which  Amherst  suspected  Justine  of  having 
prompted — that  Mrs.  Amherst  should  cancel  her  au- 
tumn engagements,  and  give  herself  up  to  a  quiet  out- 
door life  with  her  husband,  seemed  to  present  the  very 
opportunity  these  two  distracted  spirits  needed  to  find 
and  repossess  each  other.  But,  though  Amherst  was 
grateful  to  Bessy  for  having  dismissed  her  visitors — 
partly  to  please  him,  as  he  guessed — yet  he  found  the 
routine  of  the  establishment  more  oppressive  than  when 
the  house  was  full.  If  he  could  have  been  alone  with 
her  in  a  quiet  corner — the  despised  cottage  at  West- 
more,  even! — he  fancied  they  might  still  have  been 
brought  together  by  restricted  space  and  the  familiar 
exigencies  of  life.  All  the  primitive  necessities  which 
bind  together,  through  their  recurring  daily  wants,  nat- 
ures fated  to  find  no  higher  point  of  union,  had  been 
carefully  eliminated  from  the  life  at  Lynbrook,  where 
material  needs  were  not  only  provided  for  but  antici- 
pated by  a  hidden  mechanism  that  filled  the  house  with 
the  perpetual  sense  of  invisible  attendance.  Though 
Amherst  knew  that  he  and  Bessy  could  never  meet  in 
the  region  of  great  issues,  he  thought  he  might  have 
regained  the  way  to  her  heart,  and  found  relief  from 
[  296  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

his  own  inaction,  in  the  small  ministrations  of  daily 
life;  but  the  next  moment  he  smiled  to  picture  Bessy 
in  surroundings  where  the  clocks  were  not  wound  of 
themselves  and  the  doors  did  not  fly  open  at  her  ap- 
proach. Those  thick-crowding  cares  and  drudgeries 
which  serve  as  merciful  screens  between  so  many  dis- 
cordant natures  would  have  been  as  intolerable  to  her 
as  was  to  Amherst  the  great  glare  of  leisure  in  which 
he  and  she  were  now  confronted. 

He  saw  that  Bessy  was  in  the  state  of  propitiatory 
eagerness  which  always  followed  on  her  gaining  a  point 
in  their  long  duel;  and  he  could  guess  that  she  was 
tremulously  anxious  not  only  to  make  up  to  him,  by 
all  the  arts  she  knew,  for  the  sacrifice  she  had  exacted, 
but  also  to  conceal  from  every  one  the  fact  that,  as  Mr. 
Langhope  bluntly  put  it,  he  had  been  "brought  to 
terms."  Amherst  was  touched  by  her  efforts,  and 
half -ashamed  of  his  own  inability  to  respond  to  them. 
But  his  mind,  released  from  its  normal  preoccupations, 
had  become  a  dangerous  instrument  of  analysis  and 
disintegration,  and  conditions  which,  a  few  months 
before,  he  might  have  accepted  with  the  wholesome 
tolerance  of  the  busy  man,  now  pressed  on  him  un- 
endurably.  He  saw  that  he  and  his  wife  were  really 
face  to  face  for  the  first  time  since  their  marriage. 
Hitherto  something  had  always  intervened  between 
them — first  the  spell  of  her  grace  and  beauty,  and  the 
[  297  ] 


brief  joy  of  her  participation  in  his  work;  then  the 
sorrow  of  their  child's  death,  and  after  that  the  tem- 
porary exhilaration  of  carrying  out  his  ideas  at  West- 
more — but  now  that  the  last  of  these  veils  had  been 
torn  away  they  faced  each  other  as  strangers. 

The  habit  of  keeping  factory  hours  always  drove  Am- 
herst  forth  long  before  his  wife's  day  began,  and  in  the 
course  of  one  of  his  early  tramps  he  met  Miss  Brent  and 
Cicely  setting  out  for  a  distant  swamp  where  rumour 
had  it  that  a  rare  native  orchid  might  be  found.  Jus- 
tine's sylvan  tastes  had  developed  in  the  little  girl  a 
passion  for  such  pillaging  expeditions,  and  Cicely,  who 
had  discovered  that  her  step-father  knew  almost  as 
much  about  birds  and  squirrels  as  Miss  Brent  did 
about  flowers,  was  not  to  be  appeased  till  Amherst 
had  scrambled  into  the  pony-cart,  wedging  his  long 
legs  between  a  fern-box  and  a  lunch-basket,  and  bal- 
ancing a  Scotch  terrier's  telescopic  body  across  his 
knees. 

The  season  was  so  mild  that  only  one  or  two  light 
windless  frosts  had  singed  the  foliage  of  oaks  and 
beeches,  and  gilded  the  roadsides  with  a  smooth  car- 
peting of  maple  leaves.  The  morning  haze  rose  like 
smoke  from  burnt-out  pyres  of  sumach  and  sugar- 
maple;  a  silver  bloom  lay  on  the  furrows  of  the  ploughed 
fields;  and  now  and  then,  as  they  drove  on,  the  wooded 
[  298  ] 


road  showed  at  its  end  a  tarnished  disk  of  light,  where 
sea  and  sky  were  merged. 

At  length  they  left  the  road  for  a  winding  track 
through  scrub-oaks  and  glossy  thickets  of  mountain- 
laurel  ;  the  track  died  out  at  the  foot  of  a  wooded  knoll, 
and  clambering  along  its  base  they  came  upon  the 
swamp.  There  it  lay  in  charmed  solitude,  shut  in  by 
a  tawny  growth  of  larch  and  swamp-maple,  its  edges 
burnt  out  to  smouldering  shades  of  russet,  ember-red 
and  ashen-grey,  while  the  quaking  centre  still  preserved 
a  jewel-like  green,  where  hidden  lanes  of  moisture 
wound  between  islets  tufted  with  swamp-cranberry 
and  with  the  charred  browns  of  fern  and  wild  rose 
and  bay.  Sodden  earth  and  decaying  branches  gave 
forth  a  strange  sweet  odour,  as  of  the  aromatic  es- 
sences embalming  a  dead  summer;  and  the  air  charged 
with  this  scent  was  so  still  that  the  snapping  of  witch- 
hazel  pods,  the  drop  of  a  nut,  the  leap  of  a  startled 
frog,  pricked  the  silence  with  separate  points  of 
sound. 

The  pony  made  fast,  the  terrier  released,  and  fern- 
box  and  lunch-basket  slung  over  Amherst's  shoulder, 
the  three  explorers  set  forth  on  their  journey.  Am- 
herst,  as  became  his  sex,  went  first ;  but  after  a  few 
absent-minded  plunges  into  the  sedgy  depths  between 
the  islets,  he  was  ordered  to  relinquish  his  command 
and  fall  to  the  rear,  where  he  might  perform  the  hum- 
[  299  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

bier  service  of  occasionally  lifting  Cicely  over  unspan- 
nable  gulfs  of  moisture. 

Justine,  leading  the  way,  guided  them  across  the 
treacherous  surface  as  fearlessly  as  a  king-fisher,  light- 
ing instinctively  on  every  grass-tussock  and  submerged 
tree-stump  of  the  uncertain  path.  Now  and  then  she 
paused,  her  feet  drawn  close  on  their  narrow  perch, 
and  her  slender  body  swaying  over  as  she  reached  down 
for  some  rare  growth  detected  among  the  withered  reeds 
and  grasses;  then  she  would  right  herself  again  by  a 
backward  movement  as  natural  as  the  upward  spring 
of  a  branch — so  free  and  flexible  in  all  her  motions  that 
she  seemed  akin  to  the  swaying  reeds  and  curving 
brambles  which  caught  at  her  as  she  passed. 

At  length  the  explorers  reached  the  mossy  corner 
where  the  orchids  grew,  and  Cicely,  securely  balanced 
on  a  fallen  tree-trunk,  was  allowed  to  dig  the  coveted 
roots.  When  they  had  been  packed  away,  it  was  felt 
that  this  culminating  moment  must  be  celebrated  with 
immediate  libations  of  jam  and  milk ;  and  having 
climbed  to  a  dry  slope  among  the  pepper-bushes,  the 
party  fell  on  the  contents  of  the  lunch-basket.  It  was 
just  the  hour  when  Bessy's  maid  was  carrying  her 
breakfast-tray,  with  its  delicate  service  of  old  silver 
and  porcelain,  into  the  darkened  bed-room  at  Lyn- 
brook;  but  early  rising  and  hard  scrambling  had 
whetted  the  appetites  of  the  naturalists,  and  the  nurs- 
[  300  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

ery  fare  which  Cicely  spread  before  them  seemed  a 
sumptuous  reward  for  their  toil. 

"I  do  like  this  kind  of  picnic  much  better  than  the 
ones  where  mother  takes  all  the  footmen,  and  the 
mayonnaise  has  to  be  scraped  off  things  before  I  can 
eat  them,"  Cicely  declared,  lifting  her  foaming  mouth 
from  a  beaker  of  milk. 

Amherst,  lighting  his  pipe,  stretched  himself  con- 
tentedly among  the  pepper-bushes,  steeped  in  that  un- 
reflecting peace  which  is  shed  into  some  hearts  by 
communion  with  trees  and  sky.  He  too  was  glad  to  get 
away  from  the  footmen  and  the  mayonnaise,  and  he 
imagined  that  his  stepdaughter's  exclamation  summed 
up  all  the  reasons  for  his  happiness.  The  boyish 
wood-craft  which  he  had  cultivated  in  order  to  encour- 
age the  same  taste  in  his  factory  lads  came  to  life  in 
this  sudden  return  to  nature,  and  he  redeemed  his 
clumsiness  in  crossing  the  swamp  by  spying  a  marsh- 
wren's  nest  that  had  escaped  Justine,  and  detecting  in 
a  swiftly-flitting  olive-brown  bird  a  belated  tanager  in 
autumn  incognito. 

Cicely  sat  rapt  while  he  pictured  the  bird's  winter 
pilgrimage,  with  glimpses  of  the  seas  and  islands  that 
fled  beneath  him  till  his  long  southern  flight  ended  in 
the  dim  glades  of  the  equatorial  forests. 

"Oh,  what  a  good  life — how  I  should  like  to  be  a 
wander-bird,  and  look  down  people's  chimneys  twice 
[301  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

a  year!"  Justine  laughed,  tilting  her  head  back  to 
catch  a  last  glimpse  of  the  tanager. 

The  sun  beamed  full  on  their  ledge  from  a  sky  of 
misty  blue,  and  she  had  thrown  aside  her  hat,  uncover- 
ing her  thick  waves  of  hair,  blue-black  in  the  hollows, 
with  warm  rusty  edges  where  they  took  the  light.  Cicely 
dragged  down  a  plumy  spray  of  traveller's  joy  and 
wound  it  above  her  friend's  forehead;  and  thus 
wreathed,  with  her  bright  pallour  relieved  against  the 
dusky  autumn  tints,  Justine  looked  like  a  wood-spirit 
who  had  absorbed  into  herself  the  last  golden  juices 
of  the  year. 

She  leaned  back  laughing  against  a  tree-trunk,  pelt- 
ing Cicely  with  witch-hazel  pods,  making  the  terrier 
waltz  for  scraps  of  ginger-bread,  and  breaking  off  now 
and  then  to  imitate,  with  her  clear  full  notes,  the  call 
of  some  hidden  marsh-bird,  or  the  scolding  chatter  of 
a  squirrel  in  the  scrub-oaks. 

"Is  that  what  you'd  like  most  about  the  journey — 
looking  down  the  chimneys?"  Amherst  asked  with  a 
smile. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know— I  should  love  it  all!  Think  of 
the  joy  of  skimming  over  half  the  earth — seeing  it  born 
again  out  of  darkness  every  morning!  Sometimes, 
when  I've  been  up  all  night  with  a  patient,  and  have 
seen  the  world  come  back  to  me  like  that,  I've  been 
almost  mad  with  its  beauty;  and  then  the  thought  that 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

I've  never  seen  more  than  a  little  corner  of  it  makes  me 
feel  as  if  I  were  chained.  But  I  think  if  I  had  wings  I 
should  choose  to  be  a  house-swallow;  and  then,  after 
I'd  had  my  fill  of  wonders,  I  should  come  back  to  my 
familiar  corner,  and  my  house  full  of  busy  humdrum 
people,  and  fly  low  to  warn  them  of  rain,  and  wheel  up 
high  to  show  them  it  was  good  haying  weather,  and 
know  what  was  going  on  in  every  room  in  the  house, 
and  every  house  in  the  village;  and  all  the  while  I 
should  be  hugging  my  wonderful  big  secret — the  secret 
of  snow-plains  and  burning  deserts,  and  coral  islands 
and  buried  cities — and  should  put  it  all  into  my  chatter 
under  the  eaves,  that  the  people  in  the  house  were 
always  too  busy  to  stop  and  listen  to — and  when  winter 
came  I'm  sure  I  should  hate  to  leave  them,  even  to  go 
back  to  my  great  Brazilian  forests  full  of  orchids  and 
monkeys!" 

"But,  Justine,  in  winter  you  could  take  care  of  the 
monkeys,"  the  practical  Cicely  suggested. 

"Yes — and  that  would  remind  me  of  home!"  Justine 
cried,  swinging  about  to  pinch  the  little  girl's  chin. 

She  was  in  one  of  the  buoyant  moods  when  the  spirit 
of  life  caught  her  in  its  gripr  and  shook  and  tossed  her 
on  its  mighty  waves  as  a  sea-bird  is  tossed  through  the 
spray  of  flying  rollers.  At  such  moments  all  the  light 
and  music  of  the  world  seemed  distilled  into  hei  veins, 
and  forced  up  in  bubbles  of  laughter  to  her  lips  and 
[  303  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

eyes.  Amherst  had  never  seen  her  thus,  and  he  watched 
her  with  the  sense  of  relaxation  which  the  contact  of 
limpid  gaiety  brings  to  a  mind  obscured  by  failure  and 
self-distrust.  The  world  was  not  so  dark  a  place  after 
all,  if  such  springs  of  merriment  could  well  up  in  a 
heart  as  sensitive  as  hers  to  the  burden  and  toil  of 
existence. 

"Isn't  it  strange,"  she  went  on  with  a  sudden  drop 
to  gravity,  "that  the  bird  whose  wings  carry  him 
farthest  and  show  him  the  most  wonderful  things,  is 
the  one  who  always  comes  back  to  the  eaves,  and  is 
happiest  in  the  thick  of  everyday  life?" 

Her  eyes  met  Amherst's.  "It  seems  to  me,"  he 
said,  "that  you're  like  that  yourself — loving  long 
flights,  yet  happiest  in  the  thick  of  life." 

She  raised  her  dark  brows  laughingly.  "So  I  im- 
agine— but  then  you  see  I've  never  had  the  long 
flight!" 

Amherst  smiled.  "Ah,  there  it  is — one  never  knows 
— one  never  says,  This  is  the  moment!  because,  how- 
ever good  it  is,  it  always  seems  the  door  to  a  better  one 
beyond.  Faust  never  said  it  till  the  end,  when  he'd 
nothing  left  of  all  he  began  by  thinking  worth  while; 
and  then,  with  what  a  difference  it  was  said ! " 

She  pondered.  "Yes — but  it  was  the  best,  after  all 
— the  moment  in  which  he  had  nothing  left.  .  ." 

"Oh,"  Cicely  broke  in  suddenly,  "do  look  at  the 
[  304  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

squirrel  up  there!  See,  father — he's  off!  Let's  follow 
him!" 

As  she  crouched  there,  with  head  thrown  back,  and 
sparkling  lips  and  eyes,  her  fair  hair — of  her  mother's 
very  hue — making  a  shining  haze  about  her  face,  Am- 
herst  recalled  the  winter  evening  at  Hopewood,  when 
he  and  Bessy  had  tracked  the  grey  squirrel  under  the 
snowy  beeches.  Scarcely  three  years  ago — and  how 
bitter  memory  had  turned!  A  chilly  cloud  spread 
over  his  spirjt,  reducing  everything  once  more  to  the 
leaden  hue  of  reality.  .  . 

"It's  too  late  for  any  more  adventures — we  must  be 
going,"  he  said. 

XX 

AMHERST'S  morning  excursions  with  his  step- 
JT\.  daughter  and  Miss  Brent  renewed  themselves 
more  than  once.  He  welcomed  any  pretext  for  escap- 
ing from  the  unprofitable  round  of  his  thoughts,  and 
these  woodland  explorations,  with  their  gay  rivalry  of 
search  for  some  rare  plant  or  elusive  bird,  and  the 
contact  with  the  child's  happy  wonder,  and  with  the 
morning  brightness  of  Justine's  mood,  gave  him  his 
only  moments  of  self-forgetfulness. 

But  the  first  time  that  Cicely's  chatter  carried  home 
an  echo  of  their  adventures,  Amherst  saw  a  cloud  on 
his  wife's  face.    Her  resentment  of  Justine's  influence 
[  305  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

over  the  child  had  long  since  subsided,  and  in  the 
temporary  absence  of  the  governess  she  was  glad  to 
have  Cicely  amused;  but  she  was  never  quite  satisfied 
that  those  about  her  should  have  pursuits  and  diver- 
sions in  which  she  did  not  share.  Her  jealousy  did 
not  concentrate  itself  on  her  husband  and  Miss  Brent: 
Amherst  had  never  shown  any  inclination  for  the 
society  of  other  women,  and  if  the  possibility  had 
been  suggested  to  her,  she  would  probably  have  said 
that  Justine  was  not  "in  his  style" — so  unconscious  is 
a  pretty  woman  apt  to  be  of  the  versatility  of  masculine 
tastes.  But  Amherst  saw  that  she  felt  herself  excluded 
from  amusements  in  which  she  had  no  desire  to  join, 
and  of  which  she  consequently  failed  to  see  the 
purpose;  and  he  gave  up  accompanying  his  step- 
daughter. 

Bessy,  as  if  in  acknowledgment  of  his  renunciation, 
rose  earlier  in  order  to  prolong  their  rides  together. 
Dr.  Wyant  had  counselled  her  against  the  fatigue  of 
following  the  hounds,  and  she  instinctively  turned  their 
horses  away  from  the  course  the  hunt  was  likely  to 
take;  but  now  and  then  the  cry  of  the  pack,  or  the 
flash  of  red  on  a  distant  slope,  sent  the  blood  to  her 
face  and  made  her  press  her  mare  to  a  gallop.  When 
they  escaped  such  encounters  she  showed  no  great  zest 
in  the  exercise,  and  their  rides  resolved  themselves  into 
a  spiritless  middle-aged  jog  along  the  autumn  lanes. 
[  306  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

In  the  early  days  of  their  marriage  the  joy  of  a  canter 
side  by  side  had  merged  them  in  a  community  of  sensa- 
tion beyond  need  of  speech;  but  now  that  the  physical 
spell  had  passed  they  felt  the  burden  of  a  silence  that 
neither  knew  how  to  break. 

Once  only,  a  moment's  friction  galvanized  these  life- 
less rides.  It  was  one  morning  when  Bessy's  wild  mare 
Impulse,  under-exercised  and  over-fed,  suddenly  broke 
from  her  control,  and  would  have  unseated  her  but  for 
Amherst's  grasp  on  the  bridle. 

"The  horse  is  not  fit  for  you  to  ride,"  he  exclaimed, 
as  the  hot  creature,  with  shudders  of  defiance  rippling 
her  flanks,  lapsed  into  sullen  subjection . 

"It's  only  because  I  don't  ride  her  enough,"  Bessy 
panted.  "That  new  groom  is  ruining  her  mouth." 

"You  must  not  ride  her  alone,  then." 

"I  shall  not  let  that  man  ride  her." 

"  I  say  you  must  not  ride  her  alone." 

"It's  ridiculous  to  have  a  groom  at  one's  heels!'* 

"Nevertheless  you  must,  if  you  ride  Impulse." 

Their  eyes  met,  and  she  quivered  and  yielded  like  the 
horse.  "  Oh,  if  you  say  so — "  She  always  hugged  his 
brief  flashes  of  authority. 

"I  do  say  so.     You  promise  me?" 

"If  you  like " 

Amherst  had  made  an  attempt  to  occupy  himself  with 
[  307  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

the  condition  of  Lynbrook,  one  of  those  slovenly  (1- 
lages,  without  individual  character  or  the  tradition  of 
self-respect,  which  spring  up  in  America  on  the  skirts 
of  the  rich  summer  colonies.  But  Bessy  had  never 
given  Lynbrook  a  thought,  and  he  realized  the  futility 
of  hoping  to  interest  her  in  its  mongrel  population  of 
day-labourers  and  publicans  so  soon  after  his  glaring 
failure  at  Westmore.  The  sight  of  the  village  irritated 
him  whenever  he  passed  through  the  Lynbrook  gates, 
but  having  perforce  accepted  the  situation  of  prince 
consort,  without  voice  in  the  government,  he  tried  to 
put  himself  out  of  relation  with  all  the  questions  which 
had  hitherto  engrossed  him,  and  to  see  life  simply  as  a 
spectator.  He  could  even  conceive  that,  under  certain 
conditions,  there  might  be  compensations  in  the  passive 
attitude;  but  unfortunately  these  conditions  were  not 
such  as  the  life  at  Lynbrook  presented. 

The  temporary  cessation  of  Bessy's  week-end  parties 
had  naturally  not  closed  her  doors  to  occasional  visitors, 
and  glimpses  of  the  autumnal  animation  of  Long  Island 
passed  now  and  then  across  the  Amhersts'  horizon. 
Blanche  Carbury  had  installed  herself  at  Mapleside,  a 
fashionable  colony  half-way  between  Lynbrook  and 
Clifton,  and  even  Amherst,  unused  as  he  was  to  noting 
the  seemingly  inconsecutive  movements  of  idle  people, 
could  not  but  remark  that  her  visits  to  his  wife  almost 
invariably  coincided  with  Ned  Bowfort's  cantering  over 
[  308  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

unannounced  from  the  Hunt  Club,  where  he  had  taken 

• 

up  his  autumn  quarters. 

There  was  something  very  likeable  about  Bowfort,  to 
whom  Amherst  was  attracted  by  the  fact  that  he  was 
one  of  the  few  men  of  Bessy's  circle  who  knew  what 
was  going  on  in  the  outer  world.  Throughout  an  exist- 
ence which  one  divined  to  have  been  both  dependent 
and  desultory,  he  had  preserved  a  sense  of  wider  rela- 
tions and  acquired  a  smattering  of  information  to  which 
he  applied  his  only  independent  faculty,  that  of  clear 
thought.  He  could  talk  intelligently  and  not  too  in- 
accurately of  the  larger  questions  which  Lynbrook 
ignored,  and  a  gay  indifference  to  the  importance  of 
money  seemed  the  crowning  grace  of  his  nature,  till 
Amherst  suddenly  learned  that  this  attitude  of  detach- 
ment was  generally  ascribed  to  the  liberality  of  Mrs. 
Fenton  Carbury.  "  Everybody  knows  she  married  Fen- 
ton  to  provide  for  Ned,"  some  one  let  fall  in  the  course 
of  one  of  the  smoking-room  dissertations  on  which  the 
host  of  Lynbrook  had  such  difficulty  in  fixing  his  atten- 
tion; and  the  speaker's  matter-of-course  tone,  and  the 
careless  acquiescence  of  his  hearers,  were  more  offen- 
sive to  Amherst  than  the  fact  itself.  In  the  first  flush 
of  his  disgust  he  classed  the  story  as  one  of  the  lies  bred 
in  the  malarious  air  of  after-dinner  gossip;  but  gradu- 
ally he  saw  that,  whether  true  or  not,  it  had  sufficient 
circulation  to  cast  a  shade  of  ambiguity  on  the  persons 
[  309  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

concerned.  Bessy  alone  seemed  deaf  to  the  rumours 
about  her  friend.  There  was  something  captivating 
to  her  in  Mrs.  Carbury's  slang  and  noise,  in  her  defi- 
ance of  decorum  and  contempt  of  criticism.  "I  like 
Blanche  because  she  doesn't  pretend,"  was  Bessy's 
vague  justification  of  the  lady;  but  in  reality  she  was 
under  the  mysterious  spell  which  such  natures  cast 
over  the  less  venturesome  imaginations  of  their  own 
sex. 

N  Amherst  at  first  tried  to  deaden  himself  to  the  situa- 
tion, as  part  of  the  larger  coil  of  miseries  in  which  he 
found  himself;  but  all  his  traditions  were  against  such 
tolerance,  and  they  were  roused  to  revolt  by  the  receipt 
of  a  newspaper  clipping,  sent  by  an  anonymous  handr 
enlarging  on  the  fact  that  the  clandestine  meetings  of  a 
fashionable  couple  were  being  facilitated  by  the  con- 
nivance of  a  Long  Island  chatelaine.  Amherst,  hot 
from  the  perusal  of  this  paragraph,  sprang  into  the 
first  train,  and  laid  the  clipping  before  his  father-in- 
law,  who  chanced  to  be  passing  through  town  on  his 
way  from  the  Hudson  to  the  Hot  Springs. 

Mr.  Langhope,  ensconced  in  the  cushioned  privacy 
of  the  reading-room  at  the  Amsterdam  Club,  where  he 
had  invited  his  son-in-law  to  meet  him,  perused  the 
article  with  the  cool  eye  of  the  collector  to  whom  a  new 
curiosity  is  offered. 

"I  suppose,"  he  mused,  "that  in  the  time  of  the 
[310] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Pharaohs  the  Morning  Papyrus  used  to  serve  up  this 
kind  of  thing" —  and  then,  as  the  nervous  tension  of  his 
hearer  expressed  itself  in  an  abrupt  movement,  he  added, 
handing  back  the  clipping  with  a  smile:  "What  do  you 
propose  to  do?  Kill  the  editor,  and  forbid  Blanche 
and  Bowf ort  the  house  ?  " 

"I  mean  to  do  something,"  Amherst  began,  suddenly 
chilled  by  the  realization  that  his  wrath  had  not  yet 
shaped  itself  into  a  definite  plan  of  action. 

"Well,  it  must  be  that  or  nothing,"  said  Mr.  Lang- 
hope,  drawing  his  stick  meditatively  across  his  knee. 
"And,  of  course,  if  it's  that,  you'll  land  Bessy  in  a  devil 
of  a  mess." 

Without  giving  his  son-in-law  time  to  protest,  he 
touched  rapidly  but  vividly  on  the  inutility  and  em- 
barrassment of  libel  suits,  and  on  the  devices  whereby  the 
legal  means  of  vindication  from  such  attacks  may  be 
turned  against  those  who  have  recourse  to  them;  and 
Amherst  listened  with  a  sickened  sense  of  the  incom- 
patibility between  abstract  standards  of  honour  and 
their  practical  application. 

"What  should  you  do,  then?"  he  murmured,  as  Mr. 
Langhope  ended  with  his  light  shrug  and  a  "See  Trede- 
gar,  if  you  don't  believe  me" — ;  and  his  father-in-law 
replied  with  an  evasive  gesture:  "Why,  leave  the  re- 
sponsibility where  it  belongs!" 

"Where  it  belongs?" 

[311] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"To  Fenton  Carbury,  of  course.  Luckily  it's  no- 
body's business  but  his,  and  if  he  doesn't  mind  what  is 
said  about  his  wife  I  don't  see  how  you  can  take  up 
the  cudgels  for  her  without  casting  another  shade  on 
her  somewhat  chequered  reputation." 

Amherst  stared.  "  His  wife  ?  What  do  I  care  what's 
said  of  her?  I'm  thinking  of  mine!" 

"  Well,  if  Carbury  has  no  objection  to  his  wife's  meet- 
ing Bowfort,  I  don't  see  how  you  can  object  to  her 
meeting  him  at  your  house.  In  such  matters,  as  you 
know,  it  has  mercifully  been  decided  that  the  husband's 
attitude  shall  determine  other  people's;  otherwise  we 
should  be  deprived  of  the  legitimate  pleasure  of  slander- 
ing our  neighbours."  Mr.  Langhope  was  always  care- 
ful to  temper  his  explanations  with  an  "as  you  know": 
he  would  have  thought  it  ill-bred  to  omit  this  paren- 
thesis in  elucidating  the  social  code  to  his  son-in-law. 

"Then  you  mean  that  I  can  do  nothing?"  Amherst 
exclaimed. 

Mr.  Langhope  smiled.  "What  applies  to  Carbury 
applies  to  you — by  doing  nothing  you  establish  the  fact 
that  there's  nothing  to  do;  just  as  you  create  the  diffi- 
culty by  recognizing  it."  And  he  added,  as  Amherst 
sat  silent:  "Take  Bessy  away,  and  they'll  have  to  see 
each  other  elsewhere." 

Amherst  returned  to  Lynbrook  with  the  echoes  of  this 
[312] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

casuistry  in  his  brain.  It  seemed  to  him  but  a  part  of 
the  ingenious  system  of  evasion  whereby  a  society  bent 
on  the  undisturbed  pursuit  of  amusement  had  con- 
trived to  protect  itself  from  the  intrusion  of  the  disagree- 
able: a  policy  summed  up  in  Mr.  Langhope's  conclud- 
ing advice  that  Amherst  should  take  his  wife  away. 
Yes— that  was  wealth's  contemptuous  answer  to  every 
challenge  of  responsibility:  duty,  sorrow  and  disgrace 
were  equally  to  be  evaded  by  a  change  of  residence,  and 
nothing  in  life  need  be  faced  and  fought  out  while  one 
could  pay  for  a  passage  to  Europe! 

In  a  calmer  mood  Amherst's  sense  of  humour  would 
have  preserved  him  from  such  a  view  of  his  father-in- 
law's  advice;  but  just  then  it  fell  like  a  spark  on  his 
smouldering  prejudices.  He  was  clear-sighted  enough 
to  recognize  the  obstacles  to  legal  retaliation;  but  this 
only  made  him  the  more  resolved  to  assert  his  will  in 
his  own  house.  He  no  longer  paused  to  consider  the 
possible  effect  of  such  a  course  on  his  already  strained 
relations  with  his  wife:  the  man's  will  rose  in  him  and 
spoke. 

The  scene  between  Bessy  and  himself  was  short  and 
sharp;  and  it  ended  in  a  way  that  left  him  more  than 
ever  perplexed  at  the  ways  of  her  sex.  Impatient  of 
preamble,  he  had  opened  the  attack  with  his  ultimatum: 
the  suspected  couple  were  to  be  denied  the  house. 
Bessy  flamed  into  immediate  defence  of  her  friend; 
[313] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

but  to  Amherst's  surprise  she  no  longer  sounded  the 
note  of  her  own  rights.  Husband  and  wife  were  ani- 
mated by  emotions  deeper-seated  and  more  instinctive 
than  had  ever  before  confronted  them;  yet  while  Am- 
herst's resistance  was  gathering  strength  from  the  con- 
flict, Bessy  unexpectedly  collapsed  in  tears  and  submis- 
sion. She  would  do  as  he  wished,  of  course — give  up 
seeing  Blanche,  dismiss  Bowfort,  wash  her  hands,  in 
short,  of  the  imprudent  pair — in  such  matters  a  woman 
needed  a  man's  guidance,  a  wife  must  of  necessity  see 
with  her  husband's  eyes;  and  she  looked  up  into  his 
through  a  mist  of  penitence  and  admiration.  .  . 

XXI 

Fthe  first  reaction  from  her  brief  delusion  about 
Stephen  Wyant,  Justine  accepted  with  a  good 
grace  the  necessity  of  staying  on  at  Lynbrook.  Though 
she  was  now  well  enough  to  return  to  her  regular  work, 
her  talk  with  Amherst  had  made  her  feel  that,  for  the 
present,  she  could  be  of  more  use  by  remaining  with 
Bessy;  and  she  was  not  sorry  to  have  a  farther  period 
of  delay  and  reflection  before  taking  the  next  step  in 
her  life.  These  at  least  were  the  reasons  she  gave  her- 
self for  deciding  not  to  leave;  and  if  any  less  ostensible 
lurked  beneath,  they  were  not  as  yet  visible  even  to  her 
searching  self-scrutiny. 

[  314  " 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

At  first  she  was  embarrassed  by  the  obligation  of 
meeting  Dr.  Wyant,  on  whom  her  definite  refusal  had 
produced  an  effect  for  which  she  could  not  hold  herself 
blameless.  She  had  not  kept  her  promise  of  seeing  him 
on  the  day  after  their  encounter  at  the  post-office,  but 
had  written,  instead,  in  terms  which  obviously  made 
such  a  meeting  unnecessary.  But  all  her  efforts  to 
soften  the  abruptness  of  her  answer  could  not  conceal, 
from  either  herself  or  her  suitor,  that  it  was  not  the  one 
she  had  led  him  to  expect;  and  she  foresaw  that  if  she 
remained  at  Lynbrook  she  could  not  escape  a  scene  of 
recrimination. 

When  the  scene  took  place,  Wyant's  part  in  it  went 
far  toward  justifying  her  decision;  yet  his  vehement 
reproaches  contained  a  sufficient  core  of  truth  to  hum- 
ble her  pride.  It  was  lucky  for  her  somewhat  exagger- 
ated sense  of  fairness  that  he  overshot  the  mark  by 
charging  her  with  a  coquetry  of  which  she  knew  her- 
self innocent,  and  laying  on  her  the  responsibility  for 
any  follies  to  which  her  rejection  might  drive  him. 
Such  threats,  as  a  rule,  no  longer  move  the  feminine 
imagination;  yet  Justine's  pity  for  all  forms  of  weak- 
ness made  her  recognize,  in  the  very  heat  of  her  con- 
tempt for  Wyant,  that  his  reproaches  were  not  the  mere 
cry  of  wounded  vanity  but  the  appeal  of  a  nature  con- 
scious of  its  lack  of  recuperative  power.  It  seemed  to 
her  as  though  she  had  done  him  irreparable  harm, 
[315] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

and  the  feeling  might  have  betrayed  her  into  too  great 
a  show  of  compassion  had  she  not  been  restrained  by 
a  salutary  fear  of  the  result. 

The  state  of  Bessy's  nerves  necessitated  frequent 
visits  from  her  physician,  but  Justine,  on  these  occa- 
sions, could  usually  shelter  herself  behind  the  profes- 
sional reserve  which  kept  even  Wyant  from  any  open 
expression  of  feeling.  One  day,  however,  they  chanced 
to  find  themselves  alone  before  Bessy's  return  from  her 
ride.  The  servant  had  ushered  Wyant  into  the  library 
where  Justine  was  writing,  and  when  she  had  replied 
to  his  enquiries  about  his  patient  they  found  themselves 
face  to  face  with  an  awkward  period  of  waiting.  Jus- 
tine was  too  proud  to  cut  it  short  by  leaving  the  room; 
but  Wyant  answered  her  commonplaces  at  random, 
stirring  uneasily  to  and  fro  between  window  and  fire- 
side, and  at  length  halting  behind  the  table  at  which 
she  sat. 

"May  I  ask  how  much  longer  you  mean  to  stay 
here  ?"  he  said  in  a  low  voice,  his  eyes  darkening  under 
the  sullen  jut  of  the  brows. 

As  she  glanced  up  in  surprise  she  noticed  for  the  first 
time  an  odd  contraction  of  his  pupils,  and  the  discovery, 
familiar  enough  in  her  professional  experience,  made 
her  disregard  the  abruptness  of  his  question  and  softened 
the  tone  in  which  she  answered.  "I  hardly  know — I 
suppose  as  long  as  I  am  needed." 
[316] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Wyant  laughed.  "Needed  by  whom?  By  John 
Amherst?" 

A  moment  passed  before  Justine  took  in  the  full 
significance  of  the  retort;  then  the  blood  rushed  to  her 
face.  "Yes — I  believe  both  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Amherst 
need  me,"  she  answered,  keeping  her  eyes  on  his;  and 
Wyant  laughed  again. 

"You  didn't  think  so  till  Amherst  came  back  from 
Hanaford.  His  return  seems  to  have  changed  your 
plans  in  several  respects." 

She  looked  away  from  him,  for  even  now  his 
eyes  moved  her  to  pity  and  self-reproach.  "Dr. 
Wyant,  you  are  not  well;  why  do  you  wait  to  see 
Mrs.  Amherst?"  she  said. 

He  stared  at  her  and  then  his  glance  fell.  "I'm  much 
obliged — I'm  as  well  as  usual,"  he  muttered,  pushing 
the  hair  from  his  forehead  with  a  shaking  hand;  and 
at  that  moment  the  sound  of  Bessy's  voice  gave  Justine 
a  pretext  for  escape. 

In  her  own  room  she  sank  for  a  moment  under  a 
rush  of  self-disgust;  but  it  soon  receded  before  the 
saner  forces  of  her  nature,  leaving  only  a  residue  of 
pity  for  the  poor  creature  whose  secret  she  had  sur- 
prised. She  had  never  before  suspected  Wyant  of 
taking  a  drug,  nor  did  she  now  suppose  that  he  did 
so  habitually;  but  to  see  him  even  momentarily  under 
such  an  influence  explained  her  instinctive  sense  of  his 
[  317  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

weakness.  She  felt  now  that  what  would  have  been  an 
insult  on  other  lips  was  only  a  cry  of  distress  from  his; 
and  once  more  she  blamed  herself  and  forgave  him. 

But  if  she  had  been  inclined  to  any  morbidness  of 
self-reproach  she  would  have  been  saved  from  it  by 
other  cares.  For  the  moment  she  was  more  concerned 
with  Bessy's  fate  than  with  her  own — her  poor  friend 
seemed  to  have  so  much  more  at  stake,  and  so  much 
less  strength  to  bring  to  the  defence  of  her  happiness. 
Justine  was  always  saved  from  any  excess  of  self-com- 
passion by  the  sense,  within  herself,  of  abounding 
forces  of  growth  and  self-renewal,  as  though  from  every 
lopped  aspiration  a  fresh  shoot  of  energy  must  spring; 
but  she  felt  that  Bessy  had  no  such  sources  of  renova- 
tion, and  that  every  disappointment  left  an  arid  spot 
in  her  soul. 

Even  without  her  friend's  confidences,  Justine  would 
have  had  no  difficulty  in  following  the  successive 
stages  of  the  Amhersts'  inner  history.  She  knew  that 
Amherst  had  virtually  resigned  his  rule  at  Westmore, 
and  that  his  wife,  in  return  for  the  sacrifice,  was  trying 
to  conform  to  the  way  of  life  she  thought  he  preferred: 
and  the  futility  of  both  attempts  was  more  visible  to 
Justine  than  to  either  of  the  two  concerned.  She  saw 
that  the  failure  of  the  Amhersts'  marriage  lay  not  in 
any  accident  of  outward  circumstances  but  in  the  lack 
of  all  natural  points  of  contact.  As  she  put  it  to  her- 
[  318  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

self,  they  met  neither  underfoot  nor  overhead:  prac- 
tical necessities  united  them  no  more  than  imaginative 

joys- 
There  were  moments  when  Justine  thought  Amherst 

hard  to  Bessy,  as  she  suspected  that  he  had  once  been 
hard  to  his  mother — as  the  leader  of  men  must  per- 
haps always  be  hard  to  the  hampering  sex.  Yet  she 
did  justice  to  his  efforts  to  accept  the  irretrievable, 
and  to  waken  in  his  wife  some  capacity  for  sharing  in 
his  minor  interests,  since  she  had  none  of  her  own 
with  which  to  fill  their  days. 

Amherst  had  always  been  a  reader;  not,  like  Justine 
herself,  a  flame-like  devourer  of  the  page,  but  a  slow 
absorber  of  its  essence;  and  in  the  early  days  of  his 
marriage  he  had  fancied  it  would  be  easy  to  make 
Bessy  share  this  taste.  Though  his  mother  was  not  a 
bookish  woman,  he  had  breathed  at  her  side  an  air  rich 
in  allusion  and  filled  with  the  bright  presences  of  ro- 
mance; and  he  had  always  regarded  this  commerce  of 
the  imagination  as  one  of  the  normal  conditions  of  life. 
The  discovery  that  there  were  no  books  at  Lynbrook 
save  a  few  morocco  "sets"  imprisoned  behind  the  brass 
trellisings  of  the  library  had  been  one  of  the  many  sur- 
prises of  his  new  state.  But  in  his  first  months  with 
Bessy  there  was  no  room  for  books,  and  if  he  thought 
of  the  matter  it  was  only  in  a  glancing  vision  of  future 
evenings,  when  he  and  she,  in  the  calm  afterglow  of 
[319] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

happiness,  should  lean  together  over  some  cherished 
page.  Her  lack  of  response  to  any  reference  outside 
the  small  circle  of  daily  facts  had  long  since  dispelled 
that  vision;  but  now  that  his  own  mind  felt  the  need 
of  inner  sustenance  he  began  to  ask  himself  whether  he 
might  not  have  done  more  to  rouse  her  imagination. 
During  the  long  evenings  over  the  library  fire  he  tried 
to  lead  the  talk  to  books,  with  a  parenthesis,  now  and 
again,  from  the  page  beneath  his  eye;  and  Bessy  met 
the  experiment  with  conciliatory  eagerness.  She  showed, 
in  especial,  a  hopeful  but  misleading  preference  for 
poetry,  leaning  back  with  dreaming  lids  and  lovely 
parted  lips  while  he  rolled  out  the  immortal  measures; 
but  her  outward  signs  of  attention  never  ripened  into 
any  expression  of  opinion,  or  any  after-allusion  to  what 
she  heard,  and  before  long  he  discovered  that  Justine 
Brent  was  his  only  listener.  It  was  to  her  that  the 
words  he  read  began  to  be  unconsciously  addressed; 
her  comments  directed  him  in  his  choice  of  subjects, 
and  the  ensuing  discussions  restored  him  to  some 
semblance  of  mental  activity. 

Bessy,  true  to  her  new  r6le  of  acquiescence,  shone 
silently  on  this  interchange  of  ideas;  Amherst  even  de- 
tected in  her  a  vague  admiration  for  his  power  of  con- 
versing on  subjects  which  she  regarded  as  abstruse; 
and  this  childlike  approval,  combined  with  her  submis- 
sion to  his  will,  deluded  him  with  a  sense  of  recovered 
[  320  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

power  over  her.  He  could  not  but  note  that  the  new 
phase  in  their  relations  had  coincided  with  his  first 
assertion  of  mastery;  and  he  rashly  concluded  that, 
with  the  removal  of  the  influences  tending  to  separate 
them,  his  wife  might  gradually  be  won  back  to  her 
earlier  sympathy  with  his  views. 

To  accept  this  theory  was  to  apply  it;  for  nothing 
could  long  divert  Amherst  from  his  main  purpose,  and 
all  the  thwarted  strength  of  his  will  was  only  gathering 
to  itself  fresh  stores  of  energy.  He  had  never  been  a 
skilful  lover,  for  no  woman  had  as  yet  stirred  in  him 
•those  feelings  which  call  the  finer  perceptions  into 
play;  and  there  was  no  instinct  to  tell  him  that  Bessy's 
sudden  conformity  to  his  wishes  was  as  unreasoning  as 
her  surrender  to  his  first  kiss.  He  fancied  that  he  and 
she  were  at  length  reaching  some  semblance  of  that 
moral  harmony  which  should  grow  out  of  the  physical 
accord,  and  that,  poor  and  incomplete  as  the  under- 
standing was,  it  must  lift  and  strengthen  their  relation. 

He  waited  till  early  winter  had  brought  solitude 
to  Lynbrook,  dispersing  the  hunting  colony  to  various 
points  of  the  compass,  and  sending  Mr.  Langhope  to 
Egypt  and  the  Riviera,  while  Mrs.  Ansell,  as  usual, 
took  up  her  annual  tour  of  a  social  circuit  whose  ex- 
treme points  were  marked  by  Boston  and  Baltimore — 
and  then  he  made  his  final  appeal  to  his  wife. 

His  pretext  for  speaking  was  a  letter  from  Duplain, 
[321  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

definitely  announcing  his  resolve  not  to  remain  at  West- 
more.  A  year  earlier  Amherst,  deeply  moved  by  the 
letter,  would  have  given  it  to  his  wife  in  the  hope  of 
its  producing  the  same  effect  on  her.  He  knew  better 
now — he  had  learned  her  instinct  for  detecting  "busi- 
ness" under  every  serious  call  on  her  attention.  His 
only  hope,  as  always,  was  to  reach  her  through  the 
personal  appeal;  and  he  put  before  her  the  fact  of 
Duplain's  withdrawal  as  the  open  victory  of  his  an- 
tagonists. But  he  saw  at  once  that  even  this  could 
not  infuse  new  life  into  the  question. 

"If  I  go  back  he'll  stay — I  can  hold  him,  can  gain 
time  till  things  take  a  turn,"  he  urged. 

"Another?  I  thought  they  were  definitely  settled," 
she  objected  languidly. 

"No — they're  not;  they  can't  be,  on  such  a  basis," 
Amherst  broke  out  with  sudden  emphasis.  He  walked 
across  the  room,  and  came  back  to  her  side  with  a  deter- 
mined face.  "It's  a  delusion,  a  deception,"  he  ex- 
claimed, "to  think  I  can  stand  by  any  longer  and  see 
things  going  to  ruin  at  Westmore!  If  I've  made  you 
think  so,  I've  unconsciously  deceived  us  both.  As  long 
as  you're  my  wife  we've  only  .one  honour  between  us, 
and  that  honour  is  mine  to  take  care  of." 

"Honour  ?  What  an  odd  expression !"  she  said  with 
a  forced  laugh,  and  a  little  tinge  of  pink  in  her  cheek. 
"You  speak  as  if  I  had — had  made  myself  talked  about 
[  322  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

— when  you  know  I've  never  even  looked  at  another 
man!" 

"Another  man  ?"  Amherst  looked  at  her  in  wonder. 
"Good  God!  Can't  you  conceive  of  any  vow  to  be 
kept  between  husband  and  wife  but  the  primitive  one 
of  bodily  fidelity  ?  Heaven  knows  I've  never  looked  at 
another  woman — but,  by  my  reading  of  our  compact,  I 
shouldn't  be  keeping  faith  with  you  if  I  didn't  help  you 
to  keep  faith  with  better  things.  And  you  owe  me  the 
same  help — the  same  chance  to  rise  through  you,  and 
not  sink  by  you — else  we've  betrayed  each  other  more 
deeply  than  any  adultery  could  make  us ! " 

She  had  drawn  back,  turning  pale  again,  and  shrink- 
ing a  little  at  the  sound  of  words  which,  except  when 
heard  in  church,  she  vaguely  associated  with  oaths, 
slammed  doors,  and  other  evidences  of  ill-breeding;  but 
Amherst  had  been  swept  too  far  on  the  flood  of  his  in- 
dignation to  be  checked  by  such  small  signs  of  dis- 
approval. 

"You'll  say  that  what  I'm  asking  you  is  to  give  me 
back  the  free  use  of  your  money.  Well!  Why  not? 
Is  it  so  much  for  a  wife  to  give  ?  I  know  you  all  think 
that  a  man  who  marries  a  rich  woman  forfeits  his  self- 
respect  if  he  spends  a  penny  without  her  approval.  But 
that's  because  money  is  so  sacred  to  you  all !  It  seems 
to  me  the  least  important  thing  that  a  woman  entrusts 
to  her  husband.  What  of  her  dreams  and  her  hopes, 
[  323  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

her  belief  in  justice  and  goodness  and  decency  ?  If  he 
takes  those  and  destroys  them,  he'd  better  have  had  a 
mill-stone  about  his  neck.  But  nobody  has  a  word  to 
say  till  he  touches  her  dividends — then  he's  a  calculating 
brute  who  has  married  her  for  her  fortune!" 

He  had  come  close  again,  facing  her  with  outstretched 
hands,  half -commanding,  half  in  appeal.  "Don't  you 
see  that  I  can't  go  on  in  this  way — that  I've  no  right  to 
let  you  keep  me  from  Westmore?" 

Bessy  was  looking  at  him  coldly,  under  the  half- 
dropped  lids  of  indifference.  "  I  hardly  know  what  you 
mean — you  use  such  peculiar  words;  but  I  don't  see 
why  you  should  expect  me  to  give  up  all  the  ideas  I  was 
brought  up  in.  Our  standards  are  different — but  why 
should  yours  always  be  right?" 

"You  believed  they  were  right  when  you  married  me 
— have  they  changed  since  then?" 

"No;  but "  Her  face  seemed  to  harden  and 

contract  into  a  small  expressionless  mask,  in  which  he 
could  no  longer  read  anything  but  blank  opposition  to 
his  will. 

"You  trusted  my  judgment  not  long  ago,"  he  went 
on,  "when  I  asked  you  to  give  up  seeing  Mrs.  Car- 
bury " 

She  flushed,  but  with  anger,  not  compunction.  "It 
seems  to  me  that  should  be  a  reason  for  your  not  asking 
me  to  make  other  sacrifices !  When  I  gave  up  Blanche 
[324] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

I  thought  you  would  see  that  I  wanted  to  please  you — 
and  that  you  would  do  something  for  me  in  return.  .  ." 

Amherst  interrupted  her  with  a  laugh.  "Thank  you 
for  telling  me  your  real  reasons.  I  was  fool  enough  to 
think  you  acted  from  conviction — not  that  you  were 
simply  striking  a  bargain " 

He  broke  off,  and  they  looked  at  each  other  with  a 
kind  of  fear,  each  hearing  between  them  the  echo  of 
irreparable  words.  Amherst's  only  clear  feeling  was 
that  he  must  not  speak  again  till  he  had  beaten  down 
the  horrible  sensation  in  his  breast — the  rage  of  hate 
which  had  him  in  its  grip,  and  which  made  him  almost 
afraid,  while  it  lasted,  to  let  his  eyes  rest  on  the  fair 
weak  creature  before  him.  Bessy,  too,  was  in  the 
clutch  of  a  mute  anger  which  slowly  poured  its  be- 
numbing current  around  her  heart.  Strong  waves  of 
passion  did  not  quicken  her  vitality :  she  grew  inert  and 
cold  under  their  shock.  Only  one  little  pulse  of  self- 
pity  continued  to  beat  in  her,  trembling  out  at  last  on 
the  cry:  "Ah,  I  know  it's  not  because  you  care  so  much 
for  Westmore — it's  only  because  you  want  to  get  away 
from  me!" 

Amherst  stared  as  if  her  words  had  flashed  a  light 
into  the  darkest  windings  of  his  misery.  "Yes — I 
want  to  get  away.  .  ."  he  said;  and  he  turned  and 
walked  out  of  the  room. 

He  went  down  to  the  smoking-room,  and  ringing 
[  325  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

for  a  servant,  ordered  his  horse  to  be  saddled.  The 
foot-man  who  answered  his  summons  brought  the 
afternoon's  mail,  and  Amherst,  throwing  himself  down 
on  the  sofa,  began  to  tear  open  his  letters  while  he 
waited. 

He  ran  through  the  first  few  without  knowing  what 
he  read ;  but  presently  his  attention  was  arrested  by  the 
hand-writing  of  a  man  he  had  known  well  in  college, 
and  who  had  lately  come  into  possession  of  a  large 
cotton-mill  in  the  South.  He  wrote  now  to  ask  if 
Amherst  could  recommend  a  good  manager — "not 
one  of  your  old  routine  men,  but  a  young  fellow  with 
the  new  ideas.  Things  have  been  in  pretty  bad  shape 
down  here,"  the  writer  added,  "and  now  that  I'm  in 
possession  I  want  to  see  what  can  be  done  to  civilize 
the  place";  and  he  went  on  to  urge  that  Amherst 
should  come  down  himself  to  inspect  the  mills,  and 
propose  such  improvements  as  his  experience  suggested. 
"We've  all  heard  of  the  great  things  you're  doing  at 
Westmore,"  the  letter  ended;  and  Amherst  cast  it 
from  him  with  a  groan.  .  . 

It  was  Duplain's  chance,  of  course.  .  .  that  was 
his  first  thought.  He  took  up  the  letter  and  read  it 
over.  He  knew  the  man  who  wrote — no  sentimentalist 
seeking  emotional  variety  from  vague  philanthropic 
experiments,  but  a  serious  student  of  social  conditions, 
now  unexpectedly  provided  with  the  opportunity  to 
[  326  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

apply  his  ideas.  Yes,  it  was  Duplain's  chance — if 
indeed  it  might  not  be  his  own!  .  .  .  Amherst  sat 
upright,  dazzled  by  the  thought.  Why  Duplain — why 
not  himself  ?  Bessy  had  spoken  the  illuminating  word 
— what  he  wanted  was  to  get  away — to  get  away  at 
any  cost!  Escape  had  become  his  one  thought:  escape 
from  the  bondage  of  Lynbrook,  from  the  bitter 
memory  of  his  failure  at  Westmore;  and  here  was  the 
chance  to  escape  back  into  life — into  independence, 
activity  and  usefulness!  Every  atrophied  faculty  in 
him  suddenly  started  from  its  torpor,  and  his  brain 
throbbed  with  the  pain  of  the  awakening.  .  .  The 
servant  came  to  tell  him  that  his  horse  waited,  and  he 
sprang  up,  took  his  riding-whip  from  the  rack,  stared  a 
moment,  absently,  after  the  man's  retreating  back,  and 
then  dropped  down  again  on  the  sofa.  .  . 

What  was  there  to  keep  him  from  accepting?  His 
wife's  affection  was  dead — if  her  sentimental  fancy  for 
him  had  ever  deserved  the  name!  And  his  passing 
mastery  over  her  was  gone  too — he  smiled  to  remember 
that,  hardly  two  hours  earlier,  he  had  been  fatuous 
enough  to  think  he  could  still  regain  it!  Now  he  said 
to  himself  that  she  would  sooner  desert  a  friend  to 
please  him  than  sacrifice  a  fraction  of  her  income;  and 
the  discovery  cast  a  stain  of  sordidness  on  their  whole 
relation.  He  could  still  imagine  struggling  to  win  her 
back  from  another  man,  or  even  to  save  her  from  some 
[  327  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

folly  into  which  mistaken  judgment  or  perverted  en- 
thusiasm might  have  hurried  her;  but  to  go  on  battling 
against  the  dull  unimaginative  subservience  to  personal 
luxury — the  slavery  to  houses  and  servants  and  clothes 
— ah,  no,  while  he  had  any  fight  left  in  him  it  was  worth 
spending  in  a  better  cause  than  that! 

Through  the  open  window  he  could  hear,  in  the  mild 
December  stillness,  his  horse's  feet  coming  and  going 
on  the  gravel.  Her  horse,  led  up  and  down  by  her 
servant,  at  the  door  of  her  house !  .  .  .  The  sound  sym- 
bolized his  whole  future.  .  .  the  situation  his  marriage 
had  made  for  him,  and  to  which  he  must  henceforth 
bend,  unless  he  broke  with  it  then  and  there.  .  .  He 
tried  to  look  ahead,  to  follow  up,  one  by  one,  the  con- 
sequences of  such  a  break.  That  it  would  be  final  he 
had  no  doubt.  There1  are  natures  which  seem  to  be 
drawn  closer  by  dissension,  to  depend,  for  the  renewal 
of  understanding,  on  the  spark  of  generosity  and  com- 
punction that  anger  strikes  out  of  both ;  but  Amherst 
knew  that  between  himself  and  his  wife  no  such  clear- 
ing of  the  moral  atmosphere  was  possible.  The  in- 
dignation which  left  him  with  tingling  nerves  and  a 
burning  need  of  some  immediate  escape  into  action, 
crystallized  in  Bessy  into  a  hard  kernel  of  obstinacy, 
into  which,  after  each  fresh  collision,  he  felt  that  a 
little  more  of  herself  had  been  absorbed.  .  .  No,  the 
break  between  them  would  be  final — if  he  went  now 
[  328  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

he  would  not  come  back.  And  it  flashed  across  him 
that  this  solution  might  have  been  foreseen  by  his  wife 
— might  even  have  been  deliberately  planned  and  led 
up  to  by  those  about  her.  His  father-in-law  had  never 
liked  him — the  disturbing  waves  of  his  activity  had 
rippled  even  the  sheltered  surface  of  Mr.  Langhope's 
existence.  He  must  have  been  horribly  in  their  way! 
Well — it  was  not  too  late  to  take  himself  out  of  it.  In 
Bessy's  circle  the  severing  of  such  ties  was  regarded  as 
an  expensive  but  unhazardous  piece  of  surgery — nobody 
bled  to  death  of  the  wound.  .  .  The  footman  came 
back  to  remind  him  that  his  horse  was  waiting,  and 
Amherst  rose  to  his  feet. 

"Send  him  back  to  the  stable,"  he  said  with  a  glance 
at  his  watch,  "and  order  a  trap  to  take  me  to  the  next 
train." 

XXII 

WHEN  Amherst  woke,  the  next  morning,  in  the 
hotel  to  which  he  had  gone  up  from  Lynbrook,  he 
was  oppressed  by  the  sense  that  the  hardest  step  he  had 
to  take  still  lay  before  him.     It  had  been  almost  easy 
to  decide  that  the  moment  of  separation  had  come,  for 
circumstances  seemed  to  have  closed  every  other  issue 
from  his  unhappy  situation;    but  how  tell  his  wife  of 
his  decision  ?    Amherst,  to  whom  action  was  the  first 
necessity  of  being,  became  a  weak  procrastinator  when 
[  329  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

he  was  confronted  by  the  need  of  writing  instead  of 
speaking. 

To  account  for  his  abrupt  departure  from  Lynbrook 
he  had  left  word  that  he  was  called  to  town  on  business ; 
but,  since  he  did  not  mean  to  return,  some  farther  ex- 
planation was  now  necessary,  and  he  was  paralyzed  by 
the  difficulty  of  writing.  He  had  already  telegraphed 
to  his  friend  that  he  would  be  at  the  mills  the  next  day; 
but  the  southern  express  did  not  leave  till  the  afternoon, 
and  he  still  had  several  hours  in  which  to  consider  what 
he  should  say  to  his  wife.  To  postpone  the  dreaded 
task,  he  invented  the  pretext  of  some  business  to  be 
despatched,  and  taking  the  Subway  to  Wall  Street  con- 
sumed the  morning  in  futile  activities.  But  since  the 
renunciation  of  his  work  at  Westmore  he  had  no  active 
concern  with  the  financial  world,  and  by  twelve  o'clock 
he  had  exhausted  his  imaginary  affairs  and  was  journey- 
ing up  town  again.  He  left  the  train  at  Union  Square,  and 
walked  along  Fourth  Avenue,  now  definitely  resolved  to 
go  back  to  the  hotel  and  write  his  letter  before  lunching. 

At  Twenty-sixth  Street  he  had  struck  into  Madison 
Avenue,  and  was  striding  onward  with  the  fixed  eye  and 
aimless  haste  of  the  man  who  has  empty  hours  to  fill, 
when  a  hansom  drew  up  ahead  of  him  and  Justine 
Brent  sprang  out.  She  was  trimly  dressed,  as  if  for 
travel,  with  a  small  bag  in  her  hand;  but  at  sight  of 
him  she  paused  with  a  cry  of  pleasure. 
[  330  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Oh,  Mr.  Amherst,  I'm  so  glad!  I  was  afraid  I 
might  not  see  you  for  goodbye." 

"For  goodbye?"  Amherst  paused,  embarrassed. 
How  had  she  guessed  that  he  did  not  mean  to  return 
to  Lynbrook? 

"You  know,"  she  reminded  him,  "I'm  going  to  some 
friends  near  Philadelphia  for  ten  days" — and  he  re- 
membered confusedly  that  a  long  time  ago — probably 
yesterday  morning — he  had  heard  her  speak  of  her 
projected  visit. 

"I  had  no  idea,"  she  continued,  "that  you  were 
coming  up  to  town  yesterday,  or  I  should  have  tried 
to  see  you  before  you  left.  I  wanted  to  ask  you  to 
send  me  a  line  if  Bessy  needs  me — I'll  come  back  at 
once  if  she  does."  Amherst  continued  to  listen  blankly, 
as  if  making  a  painful  effort  to  regain  some  conscious- 
ness of  what  was  being  said  to  him,  and  she  went  on : 
"  She  seemed  so  nervous  and  poorly  yesterday  evening 
that  I  was  sorry  I  had  decided  to  go " 

Her  intent  gaze  reminded  him  that  the  emotions  of 
the  last  twenty-four  hours  must  still  be  visible  in  his 
face;  and  the  thought  of  what  she  might  detect  helped 
to  restore  his  self-possession.  "You  must  not  think  of 
giving  up  your  visit,"  he  began  hurriedly — he  had 
meant  to  add  "on  account  of  Bessy,"  but  he  found 
himself  unable  to  utter  his  wife's  name. 

Justine  was  still  looking  at  him.  "Oh,  I'm  sure 
[331] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

everything  will  be  all  right,"  she  rejoined.  "You  go 
back  this  afternoon,  I  suppose?  I've  left  you  a  little 
note,  with  my  address,  and  I  want  you  to  promise " 

She  paused,  for  Amherst  had  made  a  motion  as 
though  to  interrupt  her.  The  old  confused  sense  that 
there  must  always  be  truth  between  them  was  strug- 
gling in  him  with  the  strong  restraints  of  habit  and 
character;  and  suddenly,  before  he  was  conscious  of 
having  decided  to  speak,  he  heard  himself  say:  "I 
ought  to  tell  you  that  I  am  not  going  back." 

"  Not  going  back  ?  "  A  flash  of  apprehension  crossed 
Justine's  face.  "Not  till  tomorrow,  you  mean?"  she 
added,  recovering  herself. 

Amherst  hesitated,  glancing  vaguely  up  and  down 
the  street.  At  that  noonday  hour  it  was  nearly  de- 
serted, and  Justine's  driver  dozed  on  his  perch  above 
the  hansom.  They  could  speak  almost  as  openly  as 
if  they  had  been  in  one  of  the  wood-paths  at  Lynbrook. 

"Nor  tomorrow,"  Amherst  said  in  a  low  voice.  There 
was  another  pause  before  he  added:  "It  may  be  some 
time  before —  He  broke  off,  and  then  continued  with 
an  effort:  "The  fact  is,  I  am  thinking  of  going  back  to 
my  old  work." 

She  caught  him  up  with  an  exclamation  of  surprise 
and  sympathy.  "Your  old  work  ?  You  mean  at " 

She  was  checked  by  the  quick  contraction  of  pain  in 
his  face.  "Not  that!  I  mean  that  I'm  thinking  of 
[  332  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

taking  a  new  job — as  manager  of  a  Georgia  mill.  .  . 
It's  the  only  thing  I  know  how  to  do,  and  I've  got  to  do 
something — "  He  forced  a  laugh.  "The  habit  of 
work  is  incurable!" 

Justine's  face  had  grown  as  grave  as  his.  She  hesi- 
tated a  moment,  looking  down  the  street  toward  the 
angle  of  Madison  Square,  which  was  visible  from  the 
corner  where  they  stood. 

"Will  you  walk  back  to  the  square  with  me  ?  Then 
we  can  sit  down  a  moment." 

She  began  to  move  as  she  spoke,  and  he  walked  beside 
her  in  silence  till  they  had  gained  the  seat  she  pointed 
out.  Her  hansom  trailed  after  them,  drawing  up  at  the 
corner. 

As  Amherst  sat  down  beside  her,  Justine  turned  to 
him  with  an  air  of  quiet  resolution.  "Mr.  Amherst — 
will  you  let  me  ask  you  something?  Is  this  a  sudden 
decision  ?" 

"Yes.     I  decided  yesterday." 

"And  Bessy ?" 

His  glance  dropped  for  the  first  time,  but  Justine 
pressed  her  point.  "Bessy  approves?" 

"She — she  will,  I  think — when  she  knows " 

"When  she  knows?"  Her  emotion  sprang  into  her 
face.  "When  she  knows?  Then  she  does  not — yet?" 

"No.  The  offer  came  suddenly.  I  must  go  at 
once." 

[  333  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Without  seeing  her?"  She  cut  him  short  with  a 
quick  commanding  gesture.  "Mr.  Amherst,  you  can't 
do  this — you  won't  do  it!  You  will  not  go  away  with- 
out seeing  Bessy!"  she  said. 

Her  eyes  sought  his  and  drew  them  upward,  con- 
straining them  to  meet  the  full  beam  of  her  rebuking 
gaze. 

"I  must  do  what  seems  best  under  the  circumstances," 
he  answered  hesitatingly.  "She  will  hear  from  me,  of 
course;  I  shall  write  today — and  later " 

"Not  later!  Now — you  will  go  back  now  to  Lyn- 
brook!  Such  things  can't  be  told  in  writing — if  they 
must  be  said  at  all,  they  must  be  spoken.  Don't  tell 
me  that  I  don't  understand — or  that  I'm  meddling  in 
what  doesn't  concern  me.  I  don't  care  a  fig  for  that! 
I've  always  meddled  in  what  didn't  concern  me — I 
always  shall,  I  suppose,  till  I  die!  And  I  understand 
enough  to  know  that  Bessy  is  very  unhappy — and  that 
you're  the  wiser  and  stronger  of  the  two.  I  know  what 
it's  been  to  you  to  give  up  your  work — to  feel  yourself 
useless,"  she  interrupted  herself,  with  softening  eyes, 
"and  I  know  how  you've  tried.  .  .  I've  watched  you.  .  . 
but  Bessy  has  tried  too ;  and  even  if  you've  both  failed 
— if  you've  come  to  the  end  of  your  resources — it's 
for  you  to  face  the  fact,  and  help  her  face  it — not  to 
run  away  from  it  like  this!" 

Amherst  sat  silent  under  the  assault  of  her  eloquence, 
t  334  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

He  was  conscious  of  no  instinctive  resentment,  no 
sense  that  she  was,  as  she  confessed,  meddling  in 
matters  which  did  not  concern  her.  His  ebbing  spirit 
was  revived  by  the  shock  of  an  ardour  like  his  own. 
She  had  not  shrunk  from  calling  him  a  coward — and 
it  did  him  good  to  hear  her  call  him  so!  Her  words 
put  life  back  into  its  true  perspective,  restored  their 
meaning  to  obsolete  terms:  to  truth  and  manliness 
and  courage.  He  had  lived  so  long  among  equivoca- 
tions that  he  had  forgotten  how  to  look  a  fact  in  the 
face;  but  here  was  a  woman  who  judged  life  by  his 
own  standards — and  by  those  standards  she  had  found 
him  wanting! 

Still,  he  could  not  forget  the  last  bitter  hours,  or 
change  his  opinion  as  to  the  futility  of  attempting  to 
remain  at  Lynbrook.  He  felt  as  strongly  as  ever  the 
need  of  moral  and  mental  liberation — the  right  to  be- 
gin life  again  on  his  own  terms.  But  Justine  Brent  had 
made  him  see  that  his  first  step  toward  self-assertion 
had  been  the  inconsistent  one  of  trying  to  evade  its 
results. 

"You  are  right — I  will  go  back,"  he  said. 

She  thanked  him  with  her  eyes,  as  she  had  thanked 
him  on  the  terrace  at  Lynbrook,  on  the  autumn  evening 
which  had  witnessed  their  first  broken  exchange  of 
confidences;  and  he  was  struck  once  more  with  the 
change  that  feeling  produced  in  her.  Emotions  flashed 
[  335  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

across  her  face  like  the  sweep  of  sun-rent  clouds  over 
a  quiet  landscape,  bringing  out  the  gleam  of  hidden 
waters,  the  fervour  of  smouldering  colours,  all  the 
subtle  delicacies  of  modelling  that  are  lost  under  the 
light  of  an  open  sky.  And  it  was  extraordinary  how 
she  could  infuse  into  a  principle  the  warmth  and 
colour  of  a  passion !  If  conduct,  to  most  people,  seemed 
a  cold  matter  of  social  prudence  or  inherited  habit,  to 
her  it  was  always  the  newly-discovered  question  of  her 
own  relation  to  life — as  most  women  see  the  great 
issues  only  through  their  own  wants  and  prejudices,  so 
she  seemed  always  to  see  her  personal  desires  in  the 
light  of  the  larger  claims. 

"But  I  don't  think,"  Amherst  went  on,  "that  any- 
thing can  be  said  to  convince  me  that  I  ought  to  alter 
my  decision.  These  months  of  idleness  have  shown 
me  that  I'm  one  of  the  members  of  society  who  are  a 
danger  to  the  community  if  their  noses  are  not  kept  to 
the  grindstone " 

Justine  lowered  her  eyes  musingly,  and  he  saw  she 
was  undergoing  the  reaction  of  constraint  which  always 
followed  on  her  bursts  of  unpremeditated  frankness. 

"That  is  not  for  me  to  judge,"  she  answered  after  a 
moment.  "But  if  you  decide  to  go  away  for  a  time 
— surely  it  ought  to  be  in  such  a  way  that  your  going 
does  not  seem  to  cast  any  reflection  on  Bessy,  or 
subject  her  to  any  unkind  criticism." 
[  336  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Amherst,  reddening  slightly,  glanced  at  her  in  sur- 
prise. "I  don't  think  you  need  fear  that — I  shall  be 
the  only  one  criticized,"  he  said  drily. 

"Are  you  sure — if  you  take  such  a  position  as  you 
spoke  of  ?  So  few  people  understand  the  love  of  hard 
work  for  its  own  sake.  They  will  say  that  your  quarrel 
with  your  wife  has  driven  you  to  support  yourself — 
and  that  will  be  cruel  to  Bessy." 

Amherst  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "They'll  be  more 
likely  to  say  I  tried  to  play  the  gentleman  and  failed, 
and  wasn't  happy  till  I  got  back  to  my  own  place  in 
life — which  is  true  enough,"  he  added  with  a  touch  of 
irony. 

"They  may  say  that  too;  but  they  will  make  Bessy 
suffer  first — and  it  will  be  your  fault  if  she  is  humiliated 
in  that  way.  If  you  decide  to  take  up  your  factory 
work  for  a  time,  can't  you  do  so  without — without  ac- 
cepting a  salary  ?  Oh,  you  see  I  stick  at  nothing,"  she 
broke  in  upon  herself  with  a  laugh,  "and  Bessy  has 
said  things  which  make  me  see  that  she  would  suffer 
horribly  if — if  you  put  such  a  slight  on  her."  He  re- 
mained silent,  and  she  went  on  urgently:  "From 
Bessy's  standpoint  it  would  mean  a  decisive  break — the 
repudiating  of  your  whole  past.  And  it  is  a  question 
on  which  you  can  afford  to  be  generous,  because .  I 
know.  .  .  I  think,  .  .  it's  less  important  in  your  eyes 
than  hers.  .  ." 

G  337  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Amherst  glanced  at  her  quickly.  "That  particular 
form  of  indebtedness,  you  mean  ?  " 

She  smiled.  "The  easiest  to  cancel,  and  therefore 
the  least  galling;  isn't  that  the  way  you  regard  it  ?" 

"I  used  to — yes;  but — "  He  was  about  to  add: 
"No  one  at  Lynbrook  does,"  but  the  flash  of  intelli- 
gence in  her  eyes  restrained  him,  while  at  the  same 
time  it  seemed  to  answer:  "There's  my  point!  To 
see  their  limitation  is  to  allow  for  it,  since  every  en- 
lightenment brings  a  corresponding  obligation." 

She  made  no  attempt  to  put  into  words  the  argument 
her  look  conveyed,  but  rose  from  her  seat  with  a  rapid 
glance  at  her  watch. 

"And  now  I  must  go,  or  I  shall  miss  my  train."  She 
held  out  her  hand,  and  as  Amherst's  met  it,  he  said  in 
a  low  tone,  as  if  in  reply  to  her  unspoken  appeal:  "I 
shall  remember  all  you  have  said." 

It  was  a  new  experience  for  Amherst  to  be  acting  under 
the  pressure  of  another  will;  but  during  his  return 
journey  to  Lynbrook  that  afternoon  it  was  pure  relief 
to  surrender  himself  to  this  pressure,  and  the  surrender 
brought  not  a  sense  of  weakness  but  of  recovered  energy. 
It  was  not  in  his  nature  to  analyze  his  motives,  or  spend 
his  strength  in  weighing  closely  balanced  alternatives 
of  conduct;  and  though,  during  the  last  purposeless 
months,  he  had  grown  to  brood  over  every  spring  of 
[  338  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

action  in  himself  and  others,  this  tendency  disappeared 
at  once  in  contact  with  the  deed  to  be  done.  It  was  as 
though  a  tributary  stream,  gathering  its  crystal  speed 
among  the  hills,  had  been  suddenly  poured  into  the 
stagnant  waters  of  his  will;  and  he  saw  now  how  thick 
and  turbid  those  waters  had  become— how  full  of  the 
slime-bred  life  that  chokes  the  springs  of  courage. 

His  whole  desire  now  was  to  be  generous  to  his  wife: 
to  bear  the  full  brunt  of  whatever  pain  their  parting 
brought.  Justine  had  said  that  Bessy  seemed  nervous 
and  unhappy:  it  was  clear,  therefore,  that  she  also  had 
suffered  from  the  wounds  they  had  dealt  each  other, 
though  she  kept  her  unmoved  front  to  the  last.  Poor 
child!  Perhaps  that  insensible  exterior  was  the  only 
ivay  she  knew  of  expressing  courage!  It  seemed  to 
Amherst  that  all  means  of  manifesting  the  finer  im- 
pulses must  slowly  wither  in  the  Lynbrook  air.  As 
he  approached  his  destination,  his  thoughts  of  her  were 
all  pitiful:  nothing  remained  of  the  personal  resent- 
ment which  had  debased  their  parting.  He  had  tele- 
phoned from  town  to  announce  the  hour  of  his  return, 
and  when  he  emerged  from  the  station  he  half-expected 
to  find  her  seated  in  the  brougham  whose  lamps  sig- 
nalled him  through  the  early  dusk.  It  would  be  like 
her  to  undergo  such  a  reaction  of  feeling,  and  to  ex- 
press it,  not  in  words,  but  by  taking  up  their  relation  as 
if  there  had  been  no  break  in  it.  He  had  once  con- 
[  339  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

demned  this  facility  of  renewal  as  a  sign  of  lightness, 
a  result  of  that  continual  evasion  of  serious  issues  which 
made  the  life  of  Bessy's  world  a  thin  crust  of  custom 
above  a  void  of  thought.  But  he  now  saw  that,  if  she 
was  the  product  of  her  environment,  that  constituted 
but  another  claim  on  his  charity,  and  made  the  more 
precious  any  impulses  of  natural  feeling  that  had  sur- 
vived the  unifying  pressure  of  her  life.  As  he  ap- 
proached the  brougham,  he  murmured  mentally:  "What 
if  I  were  to  try  once  more  ?" 

Bessy  had  not  come  to  meet  him;  but  he  said  to  him- 
self that  he  should  find  her  alone  at  the  house,  and  that 
he  would  make  his  confession  at  once.  As  the  carriage 
passed  between  the  lights  on  the  tall  stone  gate-posts, 
and  rolled  through  the  bare  shrubberies  of  the  avenue, 
he  felt  a  momentary  tightening  of  the  heart — a  sense 
of  stepping  back  into  the  trap  from  which  he  had  just 
wrenched  himself  free — a  premonition  of  the  way  in 
which  the  smooth  systematized  routine  of  his  wife's  ex- 
istence might  draw  him  back  into  its  revolutions  as  he 
had  once  seen  a  careless  factory  hand  seized  and  dragged 
into  a  flying  belt.  .  . 

But  it  was  only  for  a  moment;  then  his  thoughts  re- 
verted to  Bessy.  It  was  she  who  was  to  be  considered 
— this  time  he  must  be  strong  enough  for  both. 

The  butler  met  him  on  the  threshold,  flanked  by  the 
usual  array  of  footmen ;  and  as  he  saw  his  portmanteau 
[340] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

ceremoniously   passed  from  hand  to   hand,   Amherst 
once  more  felt  the  steel  of  the  springe  on  his  neck. 

"Is  Mrs.  Amherst  in  the  drawing-room,  Knowles?" 
he  asked. 

"No,  sir,"  said  Knowles,  who  had  too  high  a  sense 
of  fitness  to  volunteer  any  information  beyond  the 
immediate  fact  required  of  him. 

"She  has  gone  up  to  her  sitting-room,  then?" 
Amherst  continued,  turning  toward  the  broad  sweep 
of  the  stairway. 

"No,  sir,"  said  the  butler  slowly;  "Mrs.  Amherst 
has  gone  away." 

"Gone  away  ?"  Amherst  stopped  short,  staring 
blankly  at  the  man's  smooth  official  mask. 

"This  afternoon,  sir;   to  Mapleside." 

"To  Mapleside?" 

"Yes,  sir,  by  motor — to  stay  with  Mrs.  Carbury." 

There  was  a  moment's  silence.  It  had  all  happened 
so  quickly  that  Amherst,  with  the  dual  vision  which 
comes  at  such  moments,  noticed  that  the  third  foot- 
man— or  was  it  the  fourth? — was  just  passing  his 
portmanteau  on  to  a  shirt-sleeved  arm  behind  the  door 
which  led  to  the  servant's  wing.  .  . 

He  roused  himself  to  look  at  the  tall  clock.  It 
was  just  six.  He  had  telephoned  from  town  at 
two. 

"At  what  time  did  Mrs.  Amherst  leave?" 
[341  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

The  butler  meditated.  "Sharp  at  four,  sir.  The 
maid  took  the  three-forty  with  the  luggage." 

With  the  luggage!  So  it  was  not  a  mere  one-night 
visit.  The  blood  rose  slowly  to  Amherst's  face.  The 
footmen  had  disappeared,  but  presently  the  door  at 
the  back  of  the  hall  reopened,  and  one  of  them  came 
out,  carrying  an  elaborately-appointed  tea-tray  toward 
the  smoking-room.  The  routine  of  the  house  was 
going  on  as  if  nothing  had  happened.  .  .  The  but- 
ler looked  at  Amherst  with  respectful — too  respectful 
— interrogation,  and  he  was  suddenly  conscious  that 
he  was  standing  motionless  in  the  middle  of  the  hall, 
with  one  last  intolerable  question  on  his  lips. 

Well — it  had  to  be  spoken!  "Did  Mrs.  Amherst 
receive  my  telephone  message?" 

"Yes,  sir.     I  gave  it  to  her  myself." 

It  occurred  confusedly  to  Amherst  that  a  well-bred 
man — as  Lynbrook  understood  the  phrase — would,  at 
this  point,  have  made  some  tardy  feint  of  being  in  his 
wife's  confidence,  of  having,  on  second  thoughts,  no 
reason  to  be  surprised  at  her  departure.  It  was  hu- 
miliating, he  supposed,  to  be  thus  laying  bare  his  dis- 
comfiture to  his  dependents — he  could  see  that  even 
Knowles  was  affected  by  the  manifest  impropriety  of 
the  situation — but  no  pretext  presented  itself  to  his 
mind,  and  after  another  interval  of  silence  he  turned 
slowly  toward  the  door  of  the  smoking-room 
[  342  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"My  letters  are  here,  I  suppose?"  he  paused  on  the 
threshold  to  enquire;  and  on  the  butler's  answering  in 
the  affirmative,  he  said  to  himself,  with  a  last  effort 
to  suspend  his  judgment:  "She  has  left  a  line — there 
will  be  some  explanation " 

But  there  was  nothing — neither  word  nor  message; 
nothing  but  the  reverberating  retort  of  her  departure 
in  the  face  of  his  return — her  flight  to  Blanche  Carbury 
as  the  final  answer  to  his  final  appeal. 


XXIII 

JUSTINE  was  coming  back  to  Lynbrook. 
She  had  been,  after  all,  unable  to  stay  out  the  ten 
days  of  her  visit:  the  undefinable  sense  of  being  needed, 
so  often  the  determining  motive  of  her  actions,  drew  her 
back  to  Long  Island  at  the  end  of  the  week.  She  had 
received  no  word  from  Amherst  or  Bessy;  only  Cicely 
had  told  her,  in  a  big  round  hand,  that  mother  had  been 
away  three  days,  and  that  it  had  been  very  lonely,  and 
that  the  housekeeper's  cat  had  kittens,  and  she  was  to 
have  one;  and  were  kittens  christened,  or  how  did 
they  get  their  names  ? — because  she  wanted  to  call  hers 
Justine;  and  she  had  found  in  her  book  a  bird  like  the 
one  father  had  shown  them  in  the  swamp;  and  they 
were  not  alone  now,  because  the  Telfers  were  there, 
[  343  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

and  they  had  all  been  out  sleighing;  but  it  would  be 
much  nicer  when  Justine  came  back.  .  . 

It  was  as  difficult  to  extract  any  sequence  of  facts 
from  Cicely's  letter  as  from  an  early  chronicle.  She 
made  no  reference  to  Amherst's  return,  which  was  odd, 
since  she  was  fond  of  her  step-father,  yet  not  signifi- 
cant, since  the  fact  of  his  arrival  might  have  been 
crowded  out  by  the  birth  of  the  kittens,  or  some  in- 
cident equally  prominent  in  her  perspectiveless  group- 
ing of  events;  nor  did  she  name  the  date  of  her  mother's 
departure,  so  that  Justine  could  not  guess  whether  it 
had  been  contingent  on  Amherst's  return,  or  wholly 
unconnected  with  it.  What  puzzled  her  most  was 
Bessy's  own  silence — yet  that  too,  in  a  sense,  was 
reassuring,  for  Bessy  thought  of  others  chiefly  when  it 
was  painful  to  think  of  herself,  and  her  not  writing 
implied  that  she  had  felt  no  present  need  of  her 
friend's  sympathy. 

Justine  did  not  expect  to  find  Amherst  at  Lynbrook. 
She  had  felt  convinced,  when  they  parted,  that  he 
would  persist  in  his  plan  of  going  south;  and  the  fact 
that  the  Telfer  girls  were  again  in  possession  made  it 
seem  probable  that  he  had  already  left.  Under  the  cir- 
cumstances, Justine  thought  the  separation  advisable; 
but  she  was  eager  to  be  assured  that  it  had  been  effected 
amicably,  and  without  open  affront  to  Bessy's  pride. 

She  arrived  on  a  Saturday  afternoon,  and  when  she 
[  344  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

entered  the  house  the  sound  of  voices  from  the  drawing- 
room,  and  the  prevailing  sense  of  bustle  and  move- 
ment amid  which  her  own  coming  was  evidently  an 
unconsidered  detail,  showed  that  the  normal  life  of 
Lynbrook  had  resumed  its  course.  The  Telfers,  as 
usual,  had  brought  a  lively  throng  in  their  train;  and 
amid  the  bursts  of  merriment  about  the  drawing-room 
tea-table  she  caught  Westy  Gaines's  impressive  ac- 
cents, and  the  screaming  laughter  of  Blanche  Car- 
bury.  .  . 

So  Blanche  Carbury  was  back  at  Lynbrook!  The 
discovery  gave  Justine  fresh  cause  for  conjecture. 
Whatever  reciprocal  concessions  might  have  resulted 
from  Amherst's  return  to  his  wife,  it  seemed  hardly 
probable  that  they  included  a  renewal  of  relations  with 
Mrs.  Carbury.  Had  his  mission  failed  then — had  he 
and  Bessy  parted  in  anger,  and  was  Mrs.  Carbury 's 
presence  at  Lynbrook  Bessy's  retort  to  his  assertion  of 
independence  ? 

In  the  school-room,  where  Justine  was  received  with 
the  eager  outpouring  of  Cicely's  minutest  experiences, 
she  dared  not  put  the  question  that  would  have  solved 
these  doubts;  and  she  left  to  dress  for  dinner  without 
knowing  whether  Amherst  had  returned  to  Lynbrook. 
Yet  in  her  heart  she  never  questioned  that  he  had  done 
so;  all  her  fears  revolved  about  what  had  since  taken 
place. 

[345  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

She  saw  Bessy  first  in  the  drawing-room,  surrounded 
by  her  guests;  and  their  brief  embrace  told  her  nothing, 
except  that  she  had  never  beheld  her  friend  more 
brilliant,  more  triumphantly  in  possession  of  recovered 
spirits  and  health. 

That  Amherst  was  absent  was  now  made  evident  by 
Bessy's  requesting  Westy  Gaines  to  lead  the  way  to 
the  dining-room  with  Mrs.  Ansell,  who  was  one  of  the 
reassembled  visitors;  and  the  only  one,  as  Justine 
presently  observed,  not  in  key  with  the  prevailing 
gaiety.  Mrs.  Ansell,  usually  so  tinged  with  the  colours 
of  her  environment,  preserved  on  this  occasion  a  grey 
neutrality  of  tone  which  was  the  only  break  in  the 
general  brightness.  It  was  not  in  her  graceful  person 
to  express  anything  as  gross  as  disapproval,  yet  that 
sentiment  was  manifest,  to  the  nice  observer,  in  a  del- 
icate aloofness  which  made  the  waves  of  laughter  fall 
back  from  her,  and  spread  a  circle  of  cloudy  calm 
about  her  end  of  the  table.  Justine  had  never  been 
greatly  drawn  to  Mrs.  Ansell.  Her  own  adaptability 
was  not  in  the  least  akin  to  the  older  woman's  studied 
self-effacement;  and  the  independence  of  judgment 
which  Justine  preserved  in  spite  of  her  perception  of 
divergent  standpoints  made  her  a  little  contemptuous 
of  an  excess  of  charity  that  seemed  to  have  been  ac- 
quired at  the  cost  of  all  individual  convictions.  To- 
night for  the  first  time  she  felt  in  Mrs.  Ansell  a  secret 
[346] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

sympathy  with  her  own  fears;  and  a  sense  of  this  tacit 
understanding  made  her  examine  with  sudden  interest 
the  face  of  her  unexpected  ally.  .  .  After  all,  what 
did  she  know  of  Mrs.  Ansell's  history — of  the  hidden 
processes  which  had  gradually  subdued  her  own  pas- 
sions and  desires,  making  of  her,  as  it  were,  a  mere 
decorative  background,  a  connecting  link  between 
other  personalities?  Perhaps,  for  a  woman  alone  in 
the  world,  without  the  power  and  opportunity  that 
money  gives,  there  was  no  alternative  between  letting 
one's  individuality  harden  into  a  small  dry  nucleus  of 
egoism,  or  diffuse  itself  thus  in  the  interstices  of  other 
lives — and  there  fell  upon  Justine  the  chill  thought  that 
just  such  a  future  might  await  her  if  she  missed  the 
liberating  gift  of  personal  happiness.  .  . 

Neither  that  night  nor  the  next  day  had  she  a  private 
word  with  Bessy — and  it  became  evident,  as  the  hours 
passed,  that  Mrs.  Amherst  was  deliberately  postponing 
the  moment  when  they  should  find  themselves  alone. 
But  the  Lynbrook  party  was  to  disperse  on  the  Monday; 
and  Bessy,  who  hated  early  rising,  and  all  the  details 
of  housekeeping,  tapped  at  Justine's  door  late  on  Sun- 
day night  to  ask  her  to  speed  the  departing  visitors. 

She  pleaded  this  necessity  as  an  excuse  for  her  in- 
trusion, and  the  playful  haste  of  her  manner  showed  a 
nervous  shrinking  from  any  renewal  of  confidence;  but 
[  347  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

as  she  leaned  in  the  doorway,  fingering  the  diamond 
chain  about  her  neck,  while  one  satin-tipped  foot 
emerged  restlessly  from  the  edge  of  her  lace  gown,  her 
face  lost  the  bloom  of  animation  which  talk  and 
laughter  always  produced  in  it,  and  she  looked  so  pale 
and  weary  that  Justine  needed  no  better  pretext  for 
drawing  her  into  the  room. 

It  was  not  in  Bessy  to  resist  a  soothing  touch  in  her 
moments  of  nervous  reaction.  She  sank  into  the  chair 
by  the  fire  and  let  her  head  rest  wearily  against  the 
cushion  which  Justine  slipped  behind  it. 

Justine  dropped  into  the  low  seat  beside  her,  and 
laid  a  hand  on  hers.  "You  don't  look  as  well  as  when 
I  went  away,  Bessy.  Are  you  sure  you've  done  wisely 
in  beginning  your  house-parties  so  soon?" 

It  always  alarmed  Bessy  to  be  told  that  she  was  not 
looking  her  best,  and  she  sat  upright,  a  wave  of  pink 
rising  under  her  sensitive  skin. 

"I  am  quite  well,  on  the  contrary;  but  I  was  dying 
of  inanition  in  this  big  empty  house,  and  I  suppose  I 
haven't  got  the  boredom  out  of  my  system  yet!" 

Justine  recognized  the  echo  of  Mrs.  Carbury's  man- 
ner. 

"Even  if  you  were  bored,"  she  rejoined,  "the  inani- 
tion was  probably  good  for  you.  What  does  Dr. 
Wyant  say  to  your  breaking  away  from  his  regime?" 
She  named  Wyant  purposely,  knowing  that  Bessy  had 
[348  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

that  respect  for  the  medical  verdict  which  is  the  last 
trace  of  reverence  for  authority  in  the  mind  of  the 
modern  woman.  But  Mrs.  Amherst  laughed  with 
gentle  malice. 

"  Oh,  I  haven't  seen  Dr.  Wyant  lately.  His  interest 
in  me  died  out  the  day  you  left." 

Justine  forced  a  laugh  to  hide  her  annoyance.  She 
had  not  yet  recovered  from  the  shrinking  disgust  of  her 
last  scene  with  Wyant. 

"Don't  be  a  goose,  Bessy.  If  he  hasn't  come,  it  must 
be  because  you've  told  him  not  to — because  you're 
afraid  of  letting  him  see  that  you're  disobeying  him." 

Bessy  laughed  again.  "My  dear,  I'm  afraid  of  no- 
thing— nothing!  Not  even  of  your  big  eyes  when  they 
glare  at  me  like  coals.  I  suppose  you  must  have  looked 
at  poor  Wyant  like  that  to  frighten  him  away!  And 
yet  the  last  time  we  talked  of  him  you  seemed  to  like 
him — you  even  hinted  that  it  was  because  of  him  that 
Westy  had  no  chance." 

Justine  uttered  an  impatient  exclamation.  "If 
neither  of  them  existed  it  wouldn't  affect  the  other's 
chances  in  the  least.  Their  only  merit  is  that  they 
both  enhance  the  charms  of  celibacy!" 

Bessy's  smile  dropped,  and  she  turned  a  grave  glance 
on  her  friend.  "Ah,  most  men  do  that — you're  so 
clever  to  have  found  it  out!" 

It  was  Justine's  turn  to  smile.  "Oh,  but  I  haven't — 
[  349  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

as  a  generalization.     I  mean  to  marry  as  soon  as  I  get 
the  chance!" 

"The  chance ?" 

"To  meet  the  right  man.  I'm  gambler  enough  to 
believe  in  my  luck  yet!" 

Mrs.  Amherst  sighed  compassionately.  "There  is 
no  right  man!  As  Blanche  says,  matrimony's  as  un- 
comfortable as  a  ready-made  shoe.  How  can  one  and 
the  same  institution  fit  every  individual  case?  And 
why  should  we  all  have  to  go  lame  because  marriage 
was  once  invented  to  suit  an  imaginary  case?" 

Justine  gave  a  slight  shrug.  "You  talk  of  walking 
lame — how  else  do  we  all  walk  ?  It  seems  to  me  that 
life's  the  tight  boot,  and  marriage  the  crutch  that  may 
help  one  to  hobble  along!"  She  drew  Bessy's  hand 
into  hers  with  a  ^caressing  pressure.  "When  you  phi- 
losophize I  always  know  you're  tired.  No  one  who 
feels  well  stops  to  generalize  about  symptoms.  If  you 
won't  let  your  doctor  prescribe  for  you,  your  nurse  is 
going  to  carry  out  his  orders.  What  you  want  is  quiet. 
Be  reasonable  and  send  away  everybody  before  Mr. 
Amherst  comes  back!" 

She  dropped  the  last  phrase  carelessly,  glancing  away 
as  she  spoke;  but  the  stiffening  of  the  fingers  in  her 
clasp  sent  a  little  tremor  through  her  hand. 

"Thanks  for  your  advice.     It  would  be  excellent  but 
for  one  thing — my  husband  is  not  coming  back!" 
[  350  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

The  mockery  in  Bessy's  voice  seemed  to  pass  into 
her  features,  hardening  and  contracting  them  as  frost 
shrivels  a  flower.  Justine's  face,  on  the  contrary,  was 
suddenly  illuminated  by  compassion,  as  though  a  light 
had  struck  up  into  it  from  the  cold  glitter  of  her  friend's 
unhappiness. 

"Bessy!     What  do  you  mean  by  not  coming  back?" 

"I  mean  he's  had  the  tact  to  see  that  we  shall  be 
more  comfortable  apart — without  putting  me  to  the 
unpleasant  necessity  of  telling  him  so." 

Again  the  piteous  echo  of  Blanche  Carbury's  phrases ! 
The  laboured  mimicry  of  her  ideas ! 

Justine  looked  anxiously  at  her  friend.  It  seemed 
horribly  false  not  to  mention  her  own  talk  with  Am- 
herst,  yet  she  felt  it  wiser  to  feign  ignorance,  since 
Bessy  could  never  be  trusted  to  interpret  rightly  any 
departure  from  the  conventional. 

"  Please  tell  me  what  has  happened,"  she  said  at  length. 

Bessy,  with  a  smile,  released  her  hand.  "John  has 
gone  back  to  the  life  he  prefers — which  I  take  to  be 
a  hint  to  me  to  do  the  same." 

Justine  hesitated  again;  then  the  pressure  of  truth 
overcame  every  barrier  of  expediency.  "Bessy — I 
ought  to  tell  you  that  I  saw  Mr.  Amherst  in  town  the 
day  I  went  to  Philadelphia.  He  spoke  of  going  away 
for  a  time.  .  .  he  seemed  unhappy.  .  .  but  he  told  me 
he  was  coming  back  to  see  you  first — "  She  broke 
[  351  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

off,  her  clear  eyes  on  her  friend's;  and  she  saw  at 
once  that  Bessy  was  too  self-engrossed  to  feel  any  sur- 
prise at  her  avowal.  "Surely  he  came  back?"  she 
went  on. 

"Oh,  yes — he  came  back!"  Bessy  sank  into  the 
cushions,  watching  the  firelight  play  on  her  diamond 
chain  as  she  repeated  the  restless  gesture  of  lifting  it 
up  and  letting  it  slip  through  her  fingers. 

"Well— and  then?" 

"Then — nothing!     I  was  not  here  when  he  came." 

"You  were  not  here?     What  had  happened?" 

"I  had  gone  over  to  Blanche  Carbury's  for  a  day 
or  two.  I  was  just  leaving  when  I  heard  he  was  coming 
back,  and  I  couldn't  throw  her  over  at  the  last  moment." 

Justine  tried  to  catch  the  glance  that  fluttered  eva- 
sively under  Bessy's  lashes.  "You  knew  he  was  com- 
ing— and  you  chose  that  time  to  go  to  Mrs.  Carbury's  ?  " 

"I  didn't  choose,  my  dear — it  just  happened!  And 
it  really  happened  for  the  best.  I  suppose  he  was 
annoyed  at  my  going — you  know  he  has  a  ridiculous 
prejudice  against  Blanche — and  so  the  next  morning 
he  rushed  off  to  his  cotton  mill." 

There  was  a  pause,  while  the  diamonds  continued  to 
flow  in  threads  of  fire  through  Mrs.  Amherst's  fingers. 

At  length  Justine  said:  "Did  Mr.  Amherst  know 
that  you  knew  he  was  coming  back  before  you  left  for 
Mrs.  Carbury's?" 

[  352  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Bessy  feigned  to  meditate  the  question.  "Did  he 
know  that  I  knew  that  he  knew?"  she  mocked.  "Yes 
— I  suppose  so — he  must  have  known."  She  stifled 
a  slight  yawn  as  she  drew  herself  languidly  to  her  feet. 

"Then  he  took  that  as  your  answer?" 

"My  answer ?" 

"To  his  coming  back — 

"So  it  appears.  I  told  you  he  had  shown  unusual 
tact."  Bessy  stretched  her  softly  tapering  arms  above 
her  head  and  then  dropped  them  along  her  sides  with 
another  yawn.  "But  it's  almost  morning — it's  wicked 
of  me  to  have  kept  you  so  late,  when  you  must  be  up 
to  look  after  all  those  people!" 

She  flung  her  arms  with  a  light  gesture  about  Jus- 
tine's shoulders,  and  laid  a  dry  kiss  on  her  cheek. 

"Don't  look  at  me  with  those  big  eyes — they've 
eaten  up  the  whole  of  your  face!  And  you  needn't 
think  I'm  sorry  for  what  I've  done,"  she  declared. 
"I'm  not— the — least— little — atom— of  a  bit!" 

XXIV 

JUSTINE  was  pacing  the  long  library  at  Lynbrook, 
between  the  caged  sets  of  standard  authors. 
She  felt  as  much  caged  as  they:  as  much  a  part  of  a 
conventional    stage-setting    totally    unrelated    to    the 
action  going  on  before  it.     Two  weeks  had  passed 
[  353  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

since  her  return  from  Philadelphia;  and  during  that 
time  she  had  learned  that  her  usefulness  at  Lynbrook 
was  over.  Though  not  unwelcome,  she  might  almost 
call  herself  unwanted;  life  swept  by,  leaving  her  teth- 
ered to  the  stake  of  inaction;  a  bitter  lot  for  one  who 
chose  to  measure  existence  by  deeds  instead  of  days. 
She  had  found  Bessy  ostensibly  busy  with  a  succession 
of  guests;  no  one  in  the  house  needed  her  but  Cicely, 
and  even  Cicely,  at  times,  was  caught  up  into  the 
whirl  of  her  mother's  life,  swept  off  on  sleighing  parties 
and  motor-trips,  or  carried  to  town  for  a  dancing- 
class  or  an  opera  matinee. 

Mrs.  Fenton  Carbury  was  not  among  the  visitors 
who  left  Lynbrook  on  the  Monday  after  Justine's  return. 

Mr.  Carbury,  with  the  other  bread-winners  of  the 
party,  had  hastened  back  to  his  treadmill  in  Wall  Street 
after  a  Sunday  spent  in  silently  studying  the  files  of  the 
Financial  Record;  but  his  wife  stayed  on,  somewhat 
aggressively  in  possession,  criticizing  and  rearranging 
the  furniture,  ringing  for  the  servants,  making  sudden 
demands  on  the  stable,  telegraphing,  telephoning,  or- 
dering fires  lighted  or  windows  opened,  and  leaving 
everywhere  in  her  wake  a  trail  of  cigarette  ashes  and 
cocktail  glasses. 

Ned  Bowfort  had  not  been  included  in  the  house- 
party;  but  on  the  day  of  its  dispersal  he  rode  over  un- 
announced for  luncheon,  put  up  his  horse  in  the  stable, 
[  354  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

threaded  his  way  familiarly  among  the  dozing  dogs  in 
the  hall,  greeted  Mrs.  Ansell  and  Justine  with  just  the 
right  shade  of  quiet  deference,  produced  from  his 
pocket  a  new  puzzle-game  for  Cicely,  and  sat  down 
beside  her  mother  with  the  quiet  urbanity  of  the  family 
friend  who  knows  his  privileges  but  is  too  discreet  to 
abuse  them. 

After  that  he  came  every  day,  sometimes  riding  home 
late  to  the  Hunt  Club,  sometimes  accompanying  Bessy 
and  Mrs.  Carbury  to  town  for  dinner  and  the  theatre; 
but  always  with  his  deprecating  air  of  having  dropped 
in  by  accident,  and  modestly  hoping  that  his  intrusion 
was  not  unwelcome. 

The  following  Sunday  brought  another  influx  of 
visitors,  and  Bessy  seemed  to  fling  herself  with  renewed 
enthusiasm  into  the  cares  of  hospitality.  She  had 
avoided  Justine  since  their  midnight  talk,  contriving  to 
see  her  in  Cicely's  presence,  or  pleading  haste  when 
they  found  themselves  alone.  The  winter  was  un- 
usually open,  and  she  spent  long  hours  in  the  saddle 
when  her  time  was  not  taken  up  with  her  visitors.  For 
a  while  she  took  Cicely  on  her  daily  rides;  but  she 
soon  wearied  of  adapting  her  hunter's  stride  to  the 
pace  of  the  little  girl's  pony,  and  Cicely  was  once  more 
given  over  to  the  coachman's  care. 

Then  came  snow  and  a  long  frost,  and  Bessy  grew 
restless  at  her  imprisonment,  and  grumbled  that  there 
[  355  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

was  no  way  of  keeping  well  in  a  winter  climate  which 
made  regular  exercise  impossible. 

"Why  not  build  a  squash-court?"  Blanche  Carbury 
proposed;  and  the  two  fell  instantly  to  making  plans 
under  the  guidance  of  Ned  Bowfort  and  Westy  Gaines. 
As  the  scheme  developed,  various  advisers  suggested 
that  it  was  a  pity  not  to  add  a  bowling-alley,  a  swim- 
ming-tank and  a  gymnasium;  a  fashionable  architect 
was  summoned  from  town,  measurements  were  taken, 
sites  discussed,  sketches  compared,  and  engineers  con- 
sulted as  to  the  cost  of  artesian  wells  and  the  best 
system  for  heating  the  tank. 

Bessy  seemed  filled  with  a  feverish  desire  to  carry 
out  the  plan  as  quickly  as  possible,  and  on  as  large  a 
scale  as  even  the  architect's  invention  soared  to;  but 
it  was  finally  decided  that,  before  signing  the  contracts, 
she  should  run  over  to  New  Jersey  to  see  a  building  of 
the  same  kind  on  which  a  sporting  friend  of  Mrs.  Car- 
bury's  had  recently  lavished  a  fortune. 

It  was  on  this  errand  that  the  two  ladies,  in  company 
with  Westy  Gaines  and  Bowfort,  had  departed  on  the 
day  which  found  Justine  restlessly  measuring  the 
length  of  the  library.  She  and  Mrs.  Ansell  had  the 
house  to  themselves;  and  it  was  hardly  a  surprise  to 
her  when,  in  the  course  of  the  afternoon,  Mrs.  Ansell, 
after  a  discreet  pause  on  the  threshold,  advanced  toward 
her  down  the  long  room. 

[  356  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Since  the  night  of  her  return  Justine  had  felt  sure 
that  Mrs.  Ansell  would  speak;  but  the  elder  lady  was 
given  to  hawk-like  circlings  about  her  subject,  to 
hanging  over  it  and  contemplating  it  before  her  wings 
dropped  for  the  descent. 

Now,  however,  it  was  plain  that  she  had  resolved  to 
strike;  and  Justine  had  a  sense  of  relief  at  the  thought. 
She  had  been  too  long  isolated  in  her  anxiety,  her  pow- 
erlessness  to  help ;  and  she  had  a  vague  hope  that  Mrs. 
Ansell's  worldly  wisdom  might  accomplish  what  her 
inexperience  had  failed  to  achieve. 

"Shall  we  sit  by  the  fire?  I  am  glad  to  find  you 
alone,"  Mrs.  Ansell  began,  with  the  pleasant  abrupt- 
ness that  was  one  of  the  subtlest  instruments  of  her 
indirection;  and  as  Justine  acquiesced,  she  added, 
yielding  her  slight  lines  to  the  luxurious  depths  of  an 
arm-chair:  "I  have  been  rather  suddenly  asked  by  an 
invalid  cousin  to  go  to  Europe  with  her  next  week,  and 
I  can't  go  contentedly  without  being  at  peace  about 
our  friends." 

She  paused,  but  Justine  made  no  answer.  In  spite 
of  her  growing  sympathy  for  Mrs.  Ansell  she  could  not 
overcome  an  inherent  distrust,  not  of  her  methods,  but 
of  her  ultimate  object.  What,  for  instance,  was  her 
conception  of  being  at  peace  about  the  Amhersts? 
Justine's  own  conviction  was  that,  as  far  as  their  final 
welfare  was  concerned,  any  terms  were  better  between 
[357] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

them  than  the  external  harmony  which  had  prevailed 
during  Amherst's  stay  at  Lynbrook. 

The  subtle  emanation  of  her  distrust  may  have  been 
felt  by  Mrs.  Ansell;  for  the  latter  presently  continued, 
with  a  certain  nobleness:  "I  am  the  more  concerned 
because  I  believe  I  must  hold  myself,  in  a  small  degree, 
responsible  for  Bessy's  marriage — "  and,  as  Justine 
looked  at  her  in  surprise,  she  added:  "I  thought  she 
could  never  be  happy  unless  her  affections  were  satis- 
fied— and  even  now  I  believe  so." 

"I  believe  so  too,"  Justine  said,  surprised  into  assent 
by  the  simplicity  of  Mrs.  Ansell's  declaration. 

"Well,  then — since  we  are  agreed  in  our  diagnosis," 
the  older  woman  went  on,  smiling,  "what  remedy  do 
you  suggest?  Or  rather,  how  can  we  administer  it?" 

"What  remedy?"  Justine  hesitated. 

"Oh,  I  believe  we  are  agreed  on  that  too.  Mr. 
Amherst  must  be  brought  back — but  how  to  bring 
him?"  She  paused,  and  then  added,  with  a  singular 
effect  of  appealing  frankness:  "I  ask  you,  because  I 
believe  you  to  be  the  only  one  of  Bessy's  friends  who 
is  in  the  least  in  her  husband's  confidence." 

Justine's  embarrassment  increased.  Would  it  not  be 
disloyal  both  to  Bessy  and  Amherst  to  acknowledge  to 
a  third  person  a  fact  of  which  Bessy  herself  was  un- 
aware ?  Yet  to  betray  embarrassment  under  Mrs.  An- 
sell's eyes  was  to  risk  giving  it  a  dangerous  significance. 
[  358  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Bessy  has  spoken  to  me  once  or  twice — but  I  know 
very  little  of  Mr.  Amherst's  point  of  view;  except," 
Justine  added,  after  another  moment's  weighing  of 
alternatives,  "that  I  believe  he  suffers  most  from  being 
cut  off  from  his  work  at  Westmore." 

"Yes — so  I  think;  but  that  is  a  difficulty  that  time 
and  expediency  must  adjust.  All  we  can  do — their 
friends,  I  mean — is  to  get  them  together  again  before 
the  breach  is  too  wide." 

Justine  pondered.  She  was  perhaps  more  ignorant 
of  the  situation  than  Mrs.  Ansell  imagined,  for  since  her 
talk  with  Bessy  the  latter  had  not  again  alluded  to 
Amherst's  absence,  and  Justine  could  merely  conject- 
ure that  he  had  carried  out  his  plan  of  taking  the 
management  of  the  mill  he  had  spoken  of.  What 
she  most  wished  to  know  was  whether  he  had  listened 
to  her  entreaty,  and  taken  the  position  temporarily, 
without  binding  himself  by  the  acceptance  of  a  salary; 
or  whether,  wounded  by  the  outrage  of  Bessy's  flight, 
he  had  freed  himself  from  financial  dependence  by 
engaging  himself  definitely  as  manager. 

"I  really  know  very  little  of  the  present  situation," 
Justine  said,  looking  at  Mrs.  Ansell.  "Bessy  merely 
told  me  that  Mr.  Amherst  had  taken  up  his  old  work 
in  a  cotton  mill  in  the  south." 

As  her  eyes  met  Mrs.  Ansell's  it  flashed  across  her 
that  the  latter  did  not  believe  what  she  said,  and  the 
[  359  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

perception  made  her  instantly  shrink  back  into  herself. 
But  there  was  nothing  in  Mrs.  Ansell's  tone  to  con- 
firm the  doubt  which  her  look  betrayed. 

"Ah — I  hoped  you  knew  more,"  she  said  simply; 
"for,  like  you,  I  have  only  heard  from  Bessy  that  her 
husband  went  away  suddenly  to  help  a  friend  who  is 
reorganizing  some  mills  in  Georgia.  Of  course,  under 
the  circumstances,  such  a  temporary  break  is  natural 
enough — perhaps  inevitable — only  he  must  not  stay 
away  too  long." 

Justine  was  silent.  Mrs.  Ansell's  momentary  self- 
betrayal  had  checked  all  farther  possibility  of  frank 
communion,  and  the  discerning  lady  had  seen  her  error 
too  late  to  remedy  it. 

But  her  hearer's  heart  gave  a  Jeap  of  joy.  It  was 
clear  from  what  Mrs.  Ansell  said  that  Amherst  had  not 
bound  himself  definitely,  since  he  would  not  have  done 
so  without  informing  his  wife.  And  with  a  secret  thrill 
of  happiness  Justine  recalled  his  last  word  to  her:  "I 
will  remember  all  you  have  said." 

He  had  kept  that  word  and  acted  on  it;  in  spite  of 
Bessy's  last  assault  on  his  pride  he  had  borne  with  her, 
and  deferred  the  day  of  final  rupture;  and  the  sense 
that  she  had  had  a  part  in  his  decision  fi  led  Justine 
with  a  glow  of  hope.  The  consciousness  of  Mrs.  An- 
sell's suspicions  faded  to  insignificance — Mrs.  Ansell 
and  her  kind  might  think  what  they  chose,  since  all 
[  360  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

that  mattered  now  was  that  she  herself  should  act  bravely 
and  circumspectly  in  her  last  attempt  to  save  her  friends. 

"I  am  not  sure,"  Mrs.  Ansell  continued,  gently 
scrutinizing  her  companion,  "that  I  think  it  unwise  of 
him  to  have  gone;  but  if  he  stays  too  long  Bessy  may 
listen  to  bad  advice — advice  disastrous  to  her  happi- 
ness." She  paused,  and  turned  her  eyes  meditatively 
toward  the  fire.  "As  far  as  I  know,"  she  said,  with 
the  same  air  of  serious  candour,  "you  are  the  only 
person  who  can  tell  him  this." 

"I?"  exclaimed  Justine,  with  a  leap  of  colour  to  her 
pale  cheeks. 

Mrs.  Ansell's  eyes  continued  to  avoid  her.  "My 
dear  Miss  Brent,  Bessy  has  told  me  something  of  the 
wise  counsels  you  have  given  her.  Mr.  Amherst  is 
also  your  friend.  As  I  said  just  now,  you  are  the  only 
person  who  might  act  as  a  link  between  them — surely 
you  will  not  renounce  the  role." 

Justine  controlled  herself.  "My  only  role,  as  you 
call  it,  has  been  to  urge  Bessy  to — to  try  to  allow  for 
her  husband's  views " 

"And  have  you  not  given  the  same  advice  to  Mr. 
Amherst?" 

The  eyes  of  the  two  women  met.  "Yes,"  said  Jus- 
tine, after  a  moment. 

"  Then  why  refuse  your  help  now  ?  The  moment  is 
crucial." 

[  361  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Justine's  thoughts  had  flown  beyond  the  stage  of  re- 
senting Mrs.  Ansell's  gentle  pertinacity.  All  her  facul- 
ties we  e  absorbed  in  the  question  as  to  how  she  could 
most  effectually  use  whatever  influence  she  possessed. 

"I  put  it  to  you  as  one  old  friend  to  another — will 
you  write  to  Mr.  Amherst  to  come  back?"  Mrs.  Ansell 
urged  her. 

Justine  was  past  considering  even  the  strangeness  of 
this  request,  and  its  oblique  reflection  on  the  kind  of 
power  ascribed  to  her.  Through  the  confused  beatings 
of  her  heart  she  merely  struggled  for  a  clearer  sense  of 
guidance. 

"No,"  she  said  slowly.     "I  cannot." 

"You  cannot?  With  a  friend's  happiness  in  ex- 
tremity?" Mrs.  Ansell  paused  a  moment  before  she 
added.  "Unless  you  believe  that  Bessy  would  be  hap- 
pier divorced?" 

"Divorced — ?     Oh,  no,"  Justine  shuddered. 

"That  is  what  it  will  come  to." 

"No,  no!     In  time " 

"Time  is  what  I  am  most  afraid  of,  when  Blanche 
Carbury  disposes  of  it." 

Justine  breathed  a  deep  sigh. 

"You'll  write?"  Mrs.  Ansell  murmured,  laying  a 
soft  touch  on  her  hand. 

"I  have  not  the  influence  you  think " 

"Can  you  do  any  harm  by  trying?" 
[  362  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I  might — "  Justine  faltered,  losing  her  exact 
sense  of  the  words  she  used. 

"Ah,"  the  other  flashed  back,  "then  you  have  in- 
fluence! Why  will  you  not  use  it?" 

Justine  waited  a  moment;  then  her  resolve  gathered 
itself  into  words.  "If  I  have  any  influence,  I  am  not 
sure  it  would  be  well  to  use  it  as  you  suggest." 

"Not  to  urge  Mr.  Amherst's  return?" 

"No— not  now." 

She  caught  the  same  veiled  gleam  of  incredulity  under 
Mrs.  Ansell's  lids — caught  and  disregarded  it. 

"It  must  be  now  or  never,"  Mrs.  Ansell  insisted. 

"I  can't  think  so,"  Justine  held  out. 

"Nevertheless — will  you  try?" 

"No— no!     It  might  be  fatal." 

"To  whom?" 

"To  both."  She  considered.  "If  he  came  back 
now  I  know  he  would  not  stay." 

Mrs.  Ansell  was  upon  her  abruptly.  "You  know? 
Then  you  speak  with  authority?" 

"No — what  authority?  I  speak  as  I  feel,"  Justine 
faltered. 

The  older  woman  drew  herself  to  her  feet.  "Ah — 
then  you  shoulder  a  great  responsibility!"  She  moved 
nearer  to  Justine,  and  once  more  laid  a  fugitive  touch 
upon  her.  "You  won't  write  to  him?" 

"No — no,"  the  girl  flung  back;  and  the  voices  of  the 
[  363  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

returning  party  in  the  hall  made  Mrs.  Ansell,  with  an 
almost  imperceptible  gesture  of  warning,  turn  musingly 
away  toward  the  fire. 

Bessy  came  back  brimming  with  the  wonders  she  had 
seen.  A  glazed  "sun-room,"  mosaic  pavements,  a 
marble  fountain  to  feed  the  marble  tank — and  outside 
a  water-garden,  descending  in  successive  terraces,  to 
take  up  and  utilize — one  could  see  how  practically! — 
the  overflow  from  the  tank.  If  one  did  the  thing  at  all, 
why  not  do  it  decently?  She  had  given  up  her  new 
motor,  had  let  her  town  house,  had  pinched  and  stinted 
herself  in  a  hundred  ways — if  ever  woman  was  entitled 
to  a  little  compensating  pleasure,  surely  she  was  that 
woman ! 

The  days  were  crowded  with  consultations.  Archi- 
tect, contractors,  engineers,  a  landscape  gardener,  and 
a  dozen  minor  craftsmen,  came  and  went,  unrolled 
plans,  moistened  pencils,  sketched,  figured,  argued, 
persuaded,  and  filled  Bessy  with  the  dread  of  appear- 
ing, under  Blanche  Carbury's  eyes,  subject  to  any  re- 
straining influences  of  economy.  What!  She  was  a 
young  woman,  with  an  independent  fortune,  and  she 
was  always  wavering,  considering,  secretly  referring 
back  to  the  mute  criticism  of  an  invisible  judge — of  the 
husband  who  had  been  first  to  shake  himself  free  of 
any  mutual  subjection?  The  accomplished  Blanche 
[364] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

did  not  have  to  say  this — she  conveyed  it  by  the  raising 
of  painted  brows,  by  a  smile  of  mocking  interrogation, 
a  judiciously  placed  silence  or  a  resigned  glance  at  the 
architect.  So  the  estimates  poured  in,  were  studied, 
resisted — then  yielded  to  and  signed;  then  the  hour  of 
advance  payments  struck,  and  an  imperious  appeal  was 
despatched  to  Mr.  Tredegar,  to  whom  the  management 
of  Bessy's  affairs  had  been  transferred. 

Mr.  Tredegar,  to  his  client's  surprise,  answered  the 
appeal  in  person.  He  had  not  been  lately  to  Lynbrook, 
dreading  the  cold  and  damp  of  the  country  in  winter;  and 
his  sudden  arrival  had  therefore  an  ominous  significance. 

He  came  for  an  evening  in  mid-week,  when  even 
Blanche  Carbury  was  absent,  and  Bessy  and  Justine 
had  the  house  to  themselves.  Mrs.  Ansell  had  sailed 
the  week  before  with  her  invalid  cousin.  No  farther 
words  had  passed  between  herself  and  Justine — but  the 
latter  was  conscious  that  their  talk  had  increased  in- 
stead of  lessened  the  distance  between  them.  Justine 
herself  meant  to  leave  soon.  Her  hope  of  regaining 
Bessy's  confidence  had  been  deceived,  and  seeing  her- 
self definitely  superseded,  she  chafed  anew  at  her  pur- 
poseless inactivity.  She  had  already  written  to  one  or 
two  doctors  in  New  York,  and  to  the  matron  of  Saint 
Elizabeth's.  She  had  made  herself  a  name  in  surgical 
cases,  and  it  could  not  be  long  before  a  summons 
came.  .  . 

[  365  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Meanwhile  Mr.  Tredegar  arrived,  and  the  three  dined 
together,  the  two  women  bending  meekly  to  his  dis- 
course, which  was  never  more  oracular  and  authorita- 
tive than  when  delivered  to  the  gentler  sex  alone.  Am- 
herst's  absence,  in  particular,  seemed  to  loose  the  thin 
current  of  Mr.  Tredegar's  eloquence.  He  was  never 
quite  at  ease  in  the  presence  of  an  independent  mind, 
and  Justine  often  reflected  that,  even  had  the  two  men 
known  nothing  of  each  other's  views,  there  would  have 
been  between  them  an  instinctive  and  irreducible  hos- 
tility— they  would  have  disliked  each  other  if  they  had 
merely  jostled  elbows  in  the  street. 

Yet  even  freed  from  Amherst's  presence  Mr.  Tred- 
egar showed  a  darkling  brow,  and  as  Justine  slipped 
away  after  dinner  she  felt  that  she  left  Bessy  to  some- 
thing more  serious  than  the  usual  business  conference. 

How  serious,  she  was  to  learn  that  very  night,  when, 
in  the  small  hours,  her  friend  burst  in  on  her  tear- 
fully. Bessy  was  ruined — ruined — that  was  what  Mr. 
Tredegar  had  come  to  tell  her!  She  might  have 
known  he  would  not  have  travelled  to  Lynbrook  for  a 
trifle.  .  .  She  had  expected  to  find  herself  cramped, 
restricted — to  be  warned  that  she  must  "manage," 
hateful  word!  .  .  .  But  this!  This  was  incredible! 
Unendurable!  There  was  no  money  to  build  the  gym- 
nasium— none  at  all!  And  all  because  it  had  been 
swallowed  up  at  Westmore — because  the  ridiculous 
[  366  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

changes  there,  the  changes  that  nobody  wanted,  nobody 
approved  of — that  Truscomb  and  all  the  other  experts 
had  opposed  and  derided  from  the  first — these 
changes,  even  modified  and  arrested,  had  already  in- 
volved so  much  of  her  income,  that  it  might  be  years — 
yes,  he  said  years ! — before  she  would  feel  herself  free 
again — free  of  her  own  fortune,  of  Cicely's  fortune.  .  . 
of  the  money  poor  Dick  Westmore  had  meant  his  wife 
and  child  to  enjoy! 

Justine  listened  anxiously  to  this  confused  outpouring 
of  resentments.  Bessy's  born  incapacity  for  figures 
made  it  indeed  possible  that  the  facts  came  on  her  as  a 
surprise — that  she  had  quite  forgotten  the  temporary 
reduction  of  her  income,  and  had  begun  to  imagine 
that  what  she  had  saved  in  one  direction  was  hers  to 
spend  in  another.  All  this  was  conceivable.  But  why 
had  Mr.  Tredegar  drawn  so  dark  a  picture  of  the  future  ? 
Or  was  it  only  that,  thwarted  of  her  immediate  desire, 
Bessy's  disappointment  blackened  the  farthest  verge  of 
her  horizon  ?  Justine,  though  aware  of  her  friend's 
lack  of  perspective,  suspected  that  a  conniving  hand 
had  helped  to  throw  the  prospect  out  of  drawing.  .  . 

Could  it  be  possible,  then,  that  Mr.  Tredegar  was 
among  those  who  desired  a  divorce?  That  the  influ- 
ences at  which  Mrs.  Ansell  had  hinted  proceeded  not 
only  from  Blanche  Carbury  and  her  group  ?  Helpless 
amid  this  rush  of  forebodings,  Justine  could  do  no 
[  367  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

more  than  soothe  and  restrain — to  reason  would  have 
been  idle.  She  had  never  till  now  realized  how  com- 
pletely she  had  lost  ground  with  Bessy. 

"The  humiliation — before  my  friends!  Oh,  I  was 
warned.  .  .  my  father,  every  one.  .  .  for  Cicely's  sake 
I  was  warned.  .  .  but  I  wouldn't  listen — and  now! 
From  the  first  it  was  all  he  cared  for — in  Europe, 
even,  he  was  always  dragging  me  to  factories.  Me? 
— I  was  only  the  owner  of  Westmore!  He  wanted 
power — power,  that's  all — when  he  lost  it  he  left  me 
.  .  .  oh,  I'm  glad  now  my  baby  is  dead!  Glad  there's 
nothing  between  us — nothing,  nothing  in  the  world  to 
tie  us  together  any  longer!" 

The  disproportion  between  this  violent  grief  and  its 
trivial  cause  would  have  struck  Justine  as  simply  gro- 
tesque, had  she  not  understood  that  the  incident  of  the 
gymnasium,  which  followed  with  cumulative  pressure 
on  a  series  of  similar  episodes,  seemed  to  Bessy  like  the 
reaching  out  of  a  retaliatory  hand — a  mocking  reminder 
that  she  was  still  imprisoned  in  the  consequences  of 
her  unhappy  marriage. 

Such  folly  seemed  past  weeping  for — it  froze  Jus- 
tine's compassion  into  disdain,  till  she  remembered 
that  the  sources  of  our  sorrow  are  sometimes  nobler 
than  their  means  of  expression,  and  that  a  baffled 
unappeased  love  was  perhaps  the  real  cause  of  Bessy's 
anger  against  her  husband. 

[  368  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

At  any  rate,  the  moment  was  a  critical  one,  and  Jus- 
tine remembered  with  a  pang  that  Mrs.  Ansell  had 
foreseen  such  a  contingency,  and  implored  her  to  take 
measures  against  it.  She  had  refused,  from  a  sincere 
dread  of  precipitating  a  definite  estrangement — but 
had  she  been  right  in  judging  the  situation  so  logically  ? 
With  a  creature  of  Bessy's  emotional  uncertainties  the 
result  of  contending  influences  was  really  incalculable — 
it  might  still  be  that,  at  this  juncture,  Amherst's  return 
would  bring  about  a  reaction  of  better  feelings.  .  . 

Justine  sat  and  mused  on  these  things  after  leaving 
her  friend  exhausted  upon  a  tearful  pillow.  She 
felt  that  she  had  perhaps  taken  too  large  a  survey 
of  the  situation — that  the  question  whether  there 
could  ever  be  happiness  between  this  tormented  pair 
was  not  one  to  concern  those  who  struggled  for  their 
welfare.  Most  marriages  are  a  patch-work  of  jarring 
tastes  and  ill-assorted  ambitions — if  here  and  there, 
for  a  moment,  two  colours  blend,  two  textures  are 
the  same,  so  much  the  better  for  the  pattern!  Jus- 
tine, certainly,  could  foresee  in  reunion  no  positive 
happiness  for  either  of  her  friends;  but  she  saw  posi- 
tive disaster  for  Bessy  in  separation  from  her  hus- 
band. .  . 

Suddenly  she  rose  from  her  chair  by  the  falling  fire, 
and  crossed  over  to  the  writing-table.  She  would  write 
to  Amherst  herself — she  would  tell  him  to  come.  The 
[  369  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

decision  once  reached,  hope  flowed  back  to  her  heart — 
the  joy  of  action  so  often  deceived  her  into  immediate 
faith  in  its  results! 

"Dear  Mr.  Amherst,"  she  wrote,  "the  last  time  I 
saw  you,  you  told  me  you  would  remember  what  I  said. 
I  ask  you  to  do  so  now — to  remember  that  I  urged  you 
not  to  be  away  too  long.  I  believe  you  ought  to  come 
back  now,  though  I  know  Bessy  will  not  ask  you  to.  I 
am  writing  without  her  knowledge,  but  with  the  con- 
viction that  she  needs  you,  though  perhaps  without 
knowing  it  herself.  .  ." 

She  paused,  and  laid  down  her  pen.  Why  did  it 
make  her  so  happy  to  write  to  him?  Was  it  merely 
the  sense  of  recovered  helpfulness,  or  something  warmer, 
more  personal,  that  made  it  a  joy  to  trace  his  name, 
and  to  remind  him  of  their  last  intimate  exchange  of 
words?  Well — perhaps  it  was  that  too.  There  were 
moments  when  she  was  so  mortally  lonely  that  any 
sympathetic  contact  with  another  life  sent  a  glow  into 
her  veins — that  she  was  thankful  to  warm  herself  at 
any  fire 

XXV 

BESSY,  languidly  glancing  through  her  midday  mail 
some  five  days  later,  uttered  a  slight  exclamation  as 
she  withdrew  her  finger-tip  from  the  flap  of  the  en- 
velope she  had  begun  to  open. 
[  370  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

It  was  a  black  sleety  day,  with  an  east  wind  bowing 
the  trees  beyond  the  drenched  window-panes,  and  the 
two  friends,  after  luncheon,  had  withdrawn  to  the 
library,  where  Justine  sat  writing  notes  for  Bessy,  while 
the  latter  lay  back  in  her  arm-chair,  in  the  state  of 
dreamy  listlessness  into  which  she  always  sank  when 
not  under  the  stimulus  of  amusement  or  exercise. 

She  sat  suddenly  upright  as  her  eyes  fell  on  the 
letter. 

"I  beg  your  pardon!  I  thought  it  was  for  me,"  she 
said,  holding  it  out  to  Justine. 

The  latter  reddened  as  she  glanced  at  the  super- 
scription. It  had  not  occurred  to  her  that  Amherst 
would  reply  to  her  appeal:  she  had  pictured  him 
springing  on  the  first  north-bound  train,  perhaps  not 
even  pausing  to  announce  his  return  to  his  wife.  .  . 
And  to  receive  his  letter  under  Bessy's  eye  was  un- 
deniably embarrassing,  since  Justine  felt  the  necessity 
of  keeping  her  intervention  secret. 

But  under  Bessy's  eye  she  certainly  was — it  continued 
to  rest  on  her  curiously,  speculatively,  with  an  under- 
gleam  of  malicious  significance. 

"So  stupid  of  me — I  can't  imagine  why  I  should  have 
expected  my  husband  to  write  to  me!"  Bessy  went  on, 
leaning  back  in  lazy  contemplation  of  her  other  letters, 
but  still  obliquely  including  Justine  in  her  angle  of 
vision. 

[371  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

The  latter,  after  a  moment's  pause,  broke  the  seal 
and  read. 

"Millfield,  Georgia. 

"My  dear  Miss  Brent, 

"Your  letter  reached  me  yesterday  and  I  have 
thought  it  over  carefully.  I  appreciate  the  feeling  that 
prompted  it — but  I  don't  know  that  any  friend,  how- 
ever kind  and  discerning,  can  give  the  final  advice  in 
such  matters.  You  tell  me  you  are  sure  my  wife  will 
not  ask  me  to  return — well,  under  present  conditions 
that  seems  to  me  a  sufficient  reason  for  staying  away. 

"Meanwhile,  I  assure  you  that  I  have  remembered 
all  you  said  to  me  that  day.  I  have  made  no  binding 
arrangement  here — nothing  to  involve  my  future  action 
— and  I  have  done  this  solely  because  you  asked  it. 
This  will  tell  you  better  than  words  how  much  I  value 
your  advice,  and  what  strong  reasons  I  must  have  for 
not  following  it  now. 

"I  suppose  there  are  no  more  exploring  parties  in 
this  weather.  I  wish  I  could  show  Cicely  some  of  the 
birds  down  here. 

"Yours  faithfully, 

"John  Amherst. 

"Please  don't  let  my  wife  ride  Impulse." 

Latent  under  Justine's  acute  consciousness  of  what  this 
[  372  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

letter  meant,  was  the  sense  of  Bessy's  inferences  and 
conjectures.  She  could  feel  them  actually  piercing  the 
page  in  her  hand  like  some  hypersensitive  visual  organ 
to  which  matter  offers  no  obstruction.  Or  rather, 
baffled  in  their  endeavour,  they  were  evoking  out  of 
the  unseen,  heaven  knew  what  fantastic  structure  of 
intrigue — scrawling  over  the  innocent  page  with  burn- 
ing evidences  of  perfidy  and  collusion.  .  . 

One  thing  became  instantly  clear  to  her:  she  must 
show  the  letter  to  Bessy.  She  ran  her  eyes  over  it 
again,  trying  to  disentangle  the  consequences.  There 
was  the  allusion  to  their  talk  in  town — well,  she  had 
told  Bessy  of  that!  But  the  careless  reference  to  their 
woodland  excursions — what  might  not  Bessy,  in  her 
present  mood,  make  of  it  ?  Justine's  uppermost  thought 
was  of  distress  at  the  failure  of  her  plan.  Perhaps  she 
might  still  have  induced  Amherst  to  come  back,  had  it 
not  been  for  this  accident;  but  now  that  hope  was. 
destroyed 

She  raised  her  eyes  and  met  Bessy's.  "Will  you 
read  it?"  she  said,  holding  out  the  letter. 

Bessy  received  it  with  lifted  brows,  and  a  protesting 
murmur — but  as  she  read,  Justine  saw  the  blood  mount 
under  her  clear  skin,  invade  the  temples,  the  nape,  even 
the  little  flower-like  ears;  then  it  receded  as  suddenly, 
ebbing  at  last  from  the  very  lips,  so  that  the  smile 
with  which  she  looked  up  from  her  reading  was  as 
[  373  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

white  as  if  she  had  been  under  the  stress  of  physical 
pain. 

"So  you  have  written  my  husband  to  come  back?" 

"As  you  see." 

Bessy  looked  her  straight  in  the  eyes.  "I  am  very 
much  obliged  to  you — extremely  obliged!" 

Justine  met  the  look  quietly.  "Which  means  that 
you  resent  my  interference 

"Oh,  I  leave  you  to  call  it  that!"  Bessy  mocked, 
tossing  the  letter  down  on  the  table  at  her  side. 

"Bessy!  Don't  take  it  in  that  way.  If  I  made  a 
mistake  I  did  so  with  the  hope  of  helping  you.  How  can 
I  stand  by,  after  all  these  months  together,  and  see  you  de- 
liberately destroying  your  life  without  trying  to  stop  you  ?" 

The  smile  withered  on  Bessy's  lips.  "It  is  very  dear 
and  good  of  you — I  know  you're  never  happy  unless 
you're  helping  people — but  in  this  case  I  can  only 
repeat  what  my  husband  says.  He  and  I  don't  often 
look  at  things  in  the  same  light — but  I  quite  agree  with 
him  that  the  management  of  such  matters  is  best  left 
to — to  the  persons  concerned." 

Justine  hesitated.  "I  might  answer  that,  if  you  take 
that  view,  it  was  inconsistent  of  you  to  talk  with  me 
so  openly.  You've  certainly  made  me  feel  that  you 
wanted  help — you've  turned  to  me  for  it.  But  perhaps 
that  does  not  justify  my  writing  to  Mr.  Amherst  with- 
out your  knowing  it." 

[374] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Bessy  laughed.  "Ah,  my  dear,  you  knew  that  if  you 
asked  me  the  letter  would  never  be  sent!" 

"Perhaps  I  did,"  said  Justine  simply.  "I  was  trying 
to  help  you  against  your  will." 

"Well,  you  see  the  result."  Bessy  laid  a  derisive 
touch  on  the  letter.  "Do  you  understand  now  whose 
fault  it  is  if  I  am  alone?" 

Justine  faced  her  steadily.  "There  is  nothing  in 
Mr.  Amherst's  letter  to  make  me  change  my  opinion. 
I  still  think  it  lies  with  you  to  bring  him  back." 

Bessy  raised  a  glittering  face  to  her — all  hardness  and 
laughter.  "Such  modesty,  my  dear!  As  if  I  had  a 
chance  of  succeeding  where  you  failed!" 

She  sprang  up,  brushing  the  curls  from  her  temples 
with  a  petulant  gesture.  "Don't  mind  me  if  I'm  cross 
— but  I've  had  a  dose  of  preaching  from  Maria  Ansell, 
and  I  don't  know  why  my  friends  should  treat  me  like 
a  puppet  without  any  preferences  of  my  own,  and 
press  me  upon  a  man  who  has  done  his  best  to  show 
that  he  doesn't  want  me.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  and 
I  are  luckily  agreed  on  that  point  too — and  I'm  afraid 
all  the  good  advice  in  the  world  won't  persuade  us  to 
change  our  opinion!" 

Justine  held  her  ground.     "If  I  believed  that  of 

either  of  you,  I  shouldn't  have  written — I  should  not 

be    pleading    with  you   now —      And    Mr.    Amherst 

doesn't  believe  it  either,"  she  added,  after  a  pause, 

[375] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

conscious  of  the  risk  she  was  taking,  but  thinking  the 
words  might  act  like  a  blow  in  the  face  of  a  person 
sinking  under  a  deadly  narcotic. 

Bessy's  smile  deepened  to  a  sneer.  "I  see  you've 
talked  me  over  thoroughly — and  on  his  views  I  ought 
perhaps  not  to  have  risked  an  opinion " 

"We  have  not  talked  you  over,"  Justine  exclaimed. 
"Mr.  Amherst  could  never  talk  of  you.  .  .  in  the  way 
you  think.  .  ."  And  under  the  light  staccato  of  Bessy's 
laugh  she  found  resolution  to  add:  "It  is  not  in  that 
way  that  I  know  what  he  feels." 

"Ah?     I  should  be  curious  to  hear,  then " 

Justine  turned  to  the  letter,  which  still  lay  between 
them.  "Will  you  read  the  last  sentence  again?  The 
postscript,  I  mean." 

Bessy,  after  a  surprised  glance  at  her,  took  the  letter 
up  with  the  deprecating  murmur  of  one  who  acts  under 
compulsion  rather  than  dispute  about  a  trifle. 

"The  postscript?  Let  me  see.  .  .'Don't  let  my 
wife  ride  Impulse. ' —  Et  puis  ?  "  she  murmured,  drop- 
ping the  page  again. 

"Well,  does  it  tell  you  nothing?  It's  a  cold  letter — 
at  first  I  thought  so — the  letter  of  a  man  who  believes 
himself  deeply  hurt — so  deeply  that  he  will  make  no 
advance,  no  sign  of  relenting.  That's  what  I  thought 
when  I  first  read  it.  .  .  but  the  postscript  undoes 
it  all." 

[  376  ] 


Justine,  as  she  spoke,  had  d^awn  near  Bessy,  laying 
a  hand  on  her  arm,  and  shedding  on  her  the  radiance 
of  a  face  all  charity  and  sweet  compassion.  It  was 
her  rare  gift,  at  such  moments,  to  forget  her  own  rela- 
tion to  the  person  for  whose  fate  she  was  concerned, 
to  cast  aside  all  consciousness  of  criticism  and  distrust 
in  the  heart  she  strove  to  reach,  as  pitiful  people  forget 
their  physical  timidity  in  the  attempt  to  help  a  wounded 
animal. 

For  a  moment  Bessy  seemed  to  waver.  The  colour 
flickered  faintly  up  her  cheek,  her  long  lashes  drooped 
— she  had  the  tenderest  lids! — and  all  her  face  seemed 
melting  under  the  beams  of  Justine's  ardour.  But 
the  letter  was  still  in  her  hand — her  eyes,  in  sinking, 
fell  upon  it,  and  she  sounded  beneath  her  breath  the 
fatal  phrase:  "  'I  have  done  this  solely  because  you 
asked  it.' 

"After  such  a  tribute  to  your  influence  I  don't  won- 
der you  feel  competent  to  set  everybody's  affairs  in 
order!  But  take  my  advice,  my  dear — don't  ask  me 
not  to  ride  Impulse!" 

The  pity  froze  on  Justine's  lip :  she  shrank  back  cut 
to  the  quick.  For  a  moment  the  silence  between  the 
two  women  rang  with  the  flight  of  arrowy,  wounding 
thoughts;  then  Bessy's  anger  flagged,  she  gave  one  of 
her  embarrassed  half-laughs,  and  turning  back,  laid  a 
deprecating  touch  on  her  friend's  arm. 
[  377  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"  I  didn't  mean  that,  Justine.  .  .  but  let  us  not  talk 
now — I  can't!" 

Justine  did  not  move:  the  reaction  could  not  come 
as  quickly  in  her  case.  But  she  turned  on  Bessy 
two  eyes  full  of  pardon,  full  of  speechless  pity.  .  .  and 
Bessy  received  the  look  silently  before  she  moved 
to  the  door  and  went  out. 

"Oh,  poor  thing — poor  thing!"  Justine  gasped  as 
the  door  closed. 

She  had  already  forgotten  her  own  hurt — she  was 
alone  again  with  Bessy's  sterile  pain.  She  stood 
staring  before  her  for  a  moment — then  her  eyes  fell  on 
Amherst's  letter,  which  had  fluttered  to  the  floor  be- 
tween them.  The  fatal  letter!  If  it  had  not  come  at 
that  unlucky  moment  perhaps  she  might  still  have 
gained  her  end.  .  .  She  picked  it  up  and  re-read  it. 
Yes — there  were  phrases  in  it  that  a  wounded  sus- 
picious heart  might  misconstrue.  .  .  Yet  Bessy's  last 
words  had  absolved  her.  .  .  Why  had  she  not  answered 
them?  Why  had  she  stood  there  dumb?  The  blow 
to  her  pride  had  been  too  deep,  had  been  dealt  too 
unexpectedly — for  one  miserable  moment  she  had 
thought  first  of  herself!  Ah,  that  importunate,  irre- 
pressible self — the  moi  haissable  of  the  Christian — if 
only  one  could  tear  it  from  one's  breast!  She  had 
missed  an  opportunity — her  last  opportunity  perhaps! 
By  this  time,  even,  a  hundred  hostile  influences,  cold 
[  378  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

whispers  of  vanity,  of  selfishness,  of  worldly  pride, 
might  have  drawn  their  freezing  ring  about  Bessy's 
heart.  .  . 

Justine  started  up  to  follow  her.  .  .  then  paused,  re- 
calling her  last  words.  "  Let  us  not  talk  now — I  can't ! " 
She  had  no  right  to  intrude  on  that  bleeding  privacy — 
if  the  chance  had  been  hers  she  had  lost  it.  She 
dropped  back  into  her  seat  at  the  desk,  hiding  her  face 
in  her  hands. 

Presently  she  heard  the  clock  strike,  and  true  to  her 
tireless  instinct  of  activity,  she  lifted  her  head,  took  up 
her  pen,  and  went  on  with  the  correspondence  she  had 
dropped.  .  .  It  was  hard  at  first  to  collect  her  thoughts, 
or  even  to  summon  to  her  pen  the  conventional  phrases 
that  sufficed  for  most  of  the  notes.  Groping  for  a 
word,  she  pushed  aside  her  writing  and  stared  out  at 
the  sallow  frozen  landscape  framed  by  the  window  at 
which  she  sat.  The  sleet  had  ceased,  and  hollows  of 
sunless  blue  showed  through  the  driving  wind-clouds. 
A  hard  sky  and  a  hard  ground — frost-bound  ringing 
earth  under  rigid  ice-mailed  trees. 

As  Justine  looked  out,  shivering  a  little,  she  saw  a 
woman's  figure  riding  down  the  avenue  toward  the  gate. 
The  figure  disappeared  behind  a  clump  of  evergreens 
— showed  again  farther  down,  through  the  boughs  of 
a  skeleton  beech — and  revealed  itself  in  the  next  open 
space  as  Bessy — Bessy  in  the  saddle  on  a  day  of  glaring 
[  379  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

frost,  when  no  horse  could  keep  his  footing  out  of  a 
walk! 

Justine  went  to  the  window  and  strained  her  eyes 
for  a  confirming  glimpse.  Yes — it  was  Bessy!  There 
was  no  mistaking  that  light  flexible  figure,  every  line 
swaying  true  to  the  beat  of  the  horse's  stride.  But 
Justine  remembered  that  Bessy  had  not  meant  to  ride 
— had  countermanded  her  horse  because  of  the  bad 
going.  .  .  Well,  she  was  a  perfect  horsewoman  and  had 
no  doubt  chosen  her  surest-footed  mount.  .  .  probably 
the  brown  cob,  Tony  Lumpkin. 

But  when  did  Tony's  sides  shine  so  bright  through 
the  leafless  branches  ?  And  when  did  he  sweep  his 
rider  on  with  such  long  free  play  of  the  hind-quarters  ? 
Horse  and  rider  shot  into  sight  again,  rounding  the 
curve  of  the  avenue  near  the  gates,  and  in  a  break  of 
stmlight  Justine  saw  the  glitter  of  chestnut  flanks — and 
remembered  that  Impulse  was  the  only  chestnut  in 
the  stables. .  . 

She  went  oack  to  her  seat  and  continued  writing. 
Bessy  had  left  a  formidable  heap  of  bills  and  letters; 
and  when  this  was  demolished,  Justine  had  her  own 
correspondence  to  despatch.  She  had  heard  that  morn- 
ing from  the  matron  of  Saint  Elizabeth's:  an  interest- 
ing "case"  was  offered  her,  but  she  must  come  within 
two  days.  For  the  first  few  hours  she  had  wavered, 
[  380  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

loath  to  leave  Lynbrook  without  some  definite  light  on 
her  friend's  future;  but  now  Amherst's  letter  had  shed 
that  light — or  rather,  had  deepened  the  obscurity — 
and  she  had  no  pretext  for  lingering  on  where  her  use- 
lessness  had  been  so  amply  demonstrated. 

She  wrote  to  the  matron  accepting  the  engagement; 
and  the  acceptance  involved  the  writing  of  other  letters, 
the  general  reorganizing  of  that  minute  polity,  the  life 
of  Justine  Brent.  She  smiled  a  little  to  think  how 
easily  she  could  be  displaced  and  transplanted — how 
slender  were  her  material  impedimenta,  how  few  her 
invisible  bonds!  She  was  as  light  and  detachable  as 
a  dead  leaf  on  the  autumn  breeze — yet  she  was  in  the 
season  of  sap  and  flower,  when  there  is  life  and  song 
in  the  trees! 

But  she  did  not  think  long  of  herself,  for  an  undefina- 
ble  anxiety  ran  through  her  thoughts  like  a  black 
thread.  It  found  expression,  now  and  then,  in  the  long 
glances  she  threw  through  the  window — in  her  rising 
to  consult  the  clock  and  compare  her  watch  with  it — 
in  a  nervous  snatch  of  humming  as  she  paced  the  room 
once  or  twice  before  going  back  to  her  desk.  .  . 

Why  was  Bessy  so  late?  Dusk  was  falling  already 
— the  early  end  of  the  cold  slate-hued  day.  But  Bessy 
always  rode  late — there  was  always  a  rational  answer 
to  Justine's  irrational  conjectures.  .  .  It  was  the  sight 
of  those  chestnut  flanks  that  tormented  her — she  knew 
[381  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

of  Bessy's  previous  struggles  with  the  mare.  But  the 
indulging  of  idle  apprehensions  was  not  in  her  nature, 
and  when  the  tea-tray  came,  and  with  it  Cicely,  spark- 
ling from  a  gusty  walk,  and  coral-pink  in  her  cloud  of 
crinkled  hair,  Justine  sprang  up  and  cast  off  her  cares. 

It  cost  her  a  pang,  again,  to  see  the  lamps  lit  and 
the  curtains  drawn — shutting  in  the  warmth  and 
brightness  of  the  house  from  that  wind-swept  frozen 
twilight  through  which  Bessy  rode  alone.  But  the  icy 
touch  of  the  thought  slipped  from  Justine's  mind  as 
she  bent  above  the  tea-tray,  gravely  measuring  Cicely's 
milk  into  a  "grown-up"  teacup,  hearing  the  confiden- 
tial details  of  the  child's  day,  arid  capping  them  with 
banter  and  fantastic  narrative. 

She  was  not  sorry  to  go — ah,  no!  The  house  had 
become  a  prison  to  her,  with  ghosts  walking  its  dreary 
floors.  But  to  lose  Cicely  would  be  bitter — she  had  not 
felt  how  bitter  till  the  child  pressed  against  her  in  the 
firelight,  insisting  raptly,  with  little  sharp  elbows  stab- 
bing her  knee:  "And  then  what  happened,  Justine?" 

The  door  opened,  and  some  one  came  in  to  look  at 
the  fire.  Justine,  through  the  mazes  of  her  fairy-tale, 
was  dimly  conscious  that  it  was  Knowles,  and  not  one 
of  the  footmen.  .  .  the  proud  Knowles,  who  never 
mended  the  fires  himself.  .  .  As  he  passed  out  again, 
hovering  slowly  down  the  long  room,  she  rose,  leaving 
Cicely  on  the  hearth-rug,  and  followed  him  to  the  door. 
[  382  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Has  Mrs.  Amherst  not  come  in?"  she  asked,  not 
knowing  why  she  wished  to  ask  it  out  of  the  child's 
hearing. 

"No,  miss.  I  looked  in  myself  to  see — thinking  she 
might  have  come  by  the  side-door." 

"She  may  have  gone  to  her  sitting-room." 

"She's  not  upstairs." 

They  both  paused.  Then  Justine  said:  "What 
horse  was  she  riding?" 

"Impulse,  Miss."  The  butler  looked  at  his  large 
responsible  watch.  "It's  not  late — "  he  said,  more  to 
himself  than  to  her. 

"No.     Has  she  been  riding  Impulse  lately?" 

"No,  Miss.  Not  since  that  day  the  mare  nearly  had 
her  off.  I  understood  Mr.  Amherst  did  not  wish  it." 

Justine  went  back  to  Cicely  and  the  fairy-tale. — As 
she  took  up  the  thread  of  the  Princess's  adventures,  she 
asked  herself  why  she  had  ever  had  any  hope  of  help- 
ing Bessy.  The  seeds  of  disaster  were  in  the  poor 
creature's  soul.  .  .  Even  when  she  appeared  to  be 
moved,  lifted  out  of  herself,  her  escaping  impulses  were 
always  dragged  back  to  the  magnetic  centre  of  hard 
distrust  and  resistance  that  sometimes  forms  the  core 
of  soft-fibred  natures.  As  she  had  answered  her  hus- 
band's previous  appeal  by  her  flight  to  the  woman  he 
disliked,  so  she  answered  this  one  by  riding  the  horse 
he  feared.  .  .  Justine's  last  illusions  crumbled.  Thje 
[  383  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

distance  between  two  such  natures  was  unspannable. 
Amherst  had  done  well  to  remain  away.  .  .  and  with 
a  tidal  rush  her  sympathies  swept  back  to  his  side.  .  . 

The  governess  came  to  claim  Cicely.  One  of  the  foot- 
men came  to  put  another  log  on  the  fire.  Then  the 
rite  of  removing  the  tea-table  was  majestically  per- 
formed— the  ceremonial  that  had  so  often  jarred  on 
Amherst's  nerves.  As  she  watched  it,  Justine  had  a 
vague  sense  of  the  immutability  of  the  household 
routine — a  queer  awed  feeling  that,  whatever  hap- 
pened, a  machine  so  perfectly  adjusted  would  work 
on  inexorably,  like  a  natural  law.  .  . 

She  rose  to  look  out  of  the  window,  staring  vainly 
into  blackness  between  the  parted  curtains.  As  she 
turned  back,  passing  the  writing-table,  she  noticed 
that  Cicely's  irruption  had  made  her  forget  to  post  her 
letters — an  unusual  oversight.  A  glance  at  the  clock 
told  her  that  she  was  not  too  late  for  the  mail — re- 
minding her,  at  the  same  time,  that  it  was  scarcely 
three  hours  since  Bessy  had  started  on  her  ride.  . . 
She  saw  the  foolishness  of  her  fears.  Even  in  winter, 
Bessy  often  rode  for  more  than  three  hours;  and  now 
that  the  days  were  growing  longer 

Suddenly  reassured,  Justine  went  out  into  the  hall, 
intending  to  carry  her  batch  of  letters  to  the  red  pillar- 
by  the  door.  As  she  did  so,  a  cold  blast  struck 
[  384  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

her.  Could  it  be  that  for  once  the  faultless  routine  of 
the  house  had  been  relaxed,  that  one  of  the  servants 
had  left  the  outer  door  ajar?  She  walked  over  to  the 
vestibule — yes,  both  doors  were  wide.  The  night 
rushed  in  on  a  vicious  wind.  As  she  pushed  the 
vestibule  door  shut,  she  heard  the  dogs  sniffing  and 
whining  on  the  threshold.  She  crossed  the  vestibule, 
and  heard  voices  and  the  tramping  of  feet  in  the  dark- 
ness— then  saw  a  lantern  gleam.  Suddenly  Knowles 
shot  out  of  the  night — the  lantern  struck  on  his 
bleached  face. 

Justine,  stepping  back,  pressed  the  electric  button 
in  the  wall,  and  the  wide  door-step  was  abruptly  illu- 
minated, with  its  huddled,  pushing,  heavily-breathing 
group.  .  .  black  figures  writhing  out  of  darkness, 
strange  faces  distorted  in  the  glare. 

"Bessy!"  she  cried,  and  sprang  forward;  but  sud- 
denly Wyant  was  before  her,  his  hand  on  her  arm; 
and  as  the  dreadful  group  struggled  by  into  the  hall, 
he  froze  her  to  him  with  a  whisper:  "The  spine " 

XXVI 

WITHIN  Justine  there  was  a  moment's  darkness; 
then,  like  terror-struck  workers  rallying  to  their 
tasks,   every   faculty   was    again    at    its    post,  receiv- 
ing   and    transmitting    signals,    taking    observations, 
[  385  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

anticipating  orders,  making  her  brain   ring  with  the 
hum  of  a  controlled  activity. 

She  had  known  the  sensation  before — the  transmub 
ing  of  terror  and  pity  into  this  miraculous  lucidity  of 
thought  and  action;  but  never  had  it  snatched  her 
from  such  depths.  Oh,  thank  heaven  for  her  knowl- 
edge now — for  the  trained  mind  that  could  take  com- 
mand of  her  senses  and  bend  them  firmly  to  its  service! 

Wyant  seconded  her  well,  after  a  moment's  ague-fit 
of  fear.  She  pitied  and  pardoned  the  moment,  aware 
of  its  cause,  and  respecting  him  for  the  way  in  which 
he  rose  above  it  into  the  clear  air  of  professional  self- 
command.  Through  the  first  hours  they  worked 
shoulder  to  shoulder,  conscious  of  each  other  only  as 
of  kindred  will-powers,  stretched  to  the  utmost  tension 
of  discernment  and  activity,  and  hardly  needing  speech 
or  look  to  further  their  swift  co-operation.  It  was  thus 
that  she  had  known  him  in  the  hospital,  in  the  heat  of 
his  youthful  zeal:  the  doctor  she  liked  best  to  work 
with,  because  no  other  so  tempered  ardour  with  judg- 
ment. 

The  great  surgeon,  arriving  from  town  at  midnight, 
confirmed  his  diagnosis:  there  was  undoubted  injury 
to  the  spine.  Other  consultants  were  summoned  in 
haste,  and  in  the  winter  dawn  the  verdict  was  pro- 
nounced— a  fractured  vertebra,  and  possibly  lesion  of 
the  cord. .  . 

[  386  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Justine  got  a  moment  alone  when  the  surgeons  re- 
turned to  the  sick-room.  Other  nurses  were  there  now, 
capped,  aproned,  quickly  and  silently  unpacking  their 
appliances.  .  .  She  must  call  a  halt,  clear  her  brain 
again,  decide  rapidly  what  was  to  be  done  next.  .  . 
Oh,  if  only  the  crawling  hours  could  bring  Amherst! 
It  was  strange  that  there  was  no  telegram  yet — no,  not 
strange,  after  all,  since  it  was  barely  six  in  the  morning, 
and  her  message  had  not  been  despatched  till  seven 
the  night  before.  It  was  not  unlikely  that,  in  that 
little  southern  settlement,  the  telegraph  office  closed  at 
six. 

She  stood  in  Bessy's  sitting-room,  her  forehead 
pressed  to  the  window-pane,  her  eyes  straining  out  into 
the  thin  February  darkness,  through  which  the  morn- 
ing star  swam  white.  As  soon  as  she  had  yielded  her 
place  to  the  other  nurses  her  nervous  tension  relaxed, 
and  she  hung  again  above  the  deeps  of  anguish,  terri- 
fied and  weak.  In  a  moment  the  necessity  for  action 
would  snatch  her  back  to  a  firm  footing — her  thoughts 
would  clear,  her  will  affirm  itself,  all  the  wheels  of  the 
complex  machine  resume  their  functions.  But  now 
she  felt  only  the  horror.  .  . 

She  knew  so  well  what  was  going  on  in  the  next  room. 

Dr.  Garford,  the  great  surgeon,  who  had  known  her  at 

Saint  Elizabeth's,  had  evidently  expected  her  to  take 

command  of  the  nurses  he  had  brought  from  town; 

[  387  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

but  there  were  enough  without  her,  and  there  were 
other  cares  which,  for  the  moment,  she  only  could 
assume — the  despatching  of  messages  to  the  scattered 
family,  the  incessant  telephoning  and  telegraphing  to 
town,  the  general  guidance  of  the  household  swinging 
rudderless  in  the  tide  of  disaster.  Cicely,  above  all, 
must  be  watched  over  and  guarded  from  alarm.  The 
little  governess,  reduced  to  a  twittering  heap  of  fears, 
had  been  quarantined  in  a  distant  room  till  reason  re- 
turned to  her;  and  the  child,  meanwhile,  slept  quietly 
in  the  old  nurse's  care. 

Cicely  would  wake  presently,  and  Justine  must  go 
up  to  her  with  a  bright  face;  other  duties  would  press 
thick  on  the  heels  of  this;  their  feet  were  already  on 
the  threshold.  But  meanwhile  she  could  only  follow 
in  imagination  what  was  going  on  in  the  other 
room.  .  . 

She  had  often  thought  with  dread  of  such  a  contin- 
gency. She  always  sympathized  too  much  with  her 
patients — she  knew  it  was  the  joint  in  her  armour. 
Her  quick-gushing  pity  lay  too  near  that  professional 
exterior  which  she  had  managed  to  endue  with  such  a 
bright  glaze  of  insensibility  that  some  sentimental 
patients — without  much  the  matter — had  been  known 
to  call  her  "a  little  hard."  How,  then,  should  she 
steel  herself  if  it  fell  to  her  lot  to  witness  a  cruel  acci- 
dent to  some  one  she  loved,  and  to  have  to  perform 
[  388  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

a  nurse's  duties,  steadily,  expertly,  unflinchingly,  while 
every  fibre  was  torn  with  inward  anguish  ? 

She  knew  the  horror  of  it  now — and  she  knew  also 
that  her  self-enforced  exile  from  the  sick-room  was  a 
hundred  times  worse.  To  stand  there,  knowing,  with 
each  tick  of  the  clock,  what  was  being  said  and  done 
within — how  the  great  luxurious  room,  with  its  pale 
draperies  and  scented  cushions,  and  the  hundred  pretty 
trifles  strewing  the  lace  toilet-table  and  the  delicate  old 
furniture,  was  being  swept  bare,  cleared  for  action  like 
a  ship's  deck,  drearily  garnished  with  rows  of  instru- 
ments, rolls  of  medicated  cotton,  oiled  silk,  bottles, 
bandages,  water-pillows — all  the  grim  paraphernalia 
of  the  awful  rites  of  pain :  to  know  this,  and  to  be  able 
to  call  up  with  torturing  vividness  that  poor  pale  face 
on  the  pillows,  vague-eyed,  expressionless,  perhaps,  as 
she  had  last  seen  it,  or — worse  yet — stirred  already  with 
the  first  creeping  pangs  of  consciousness :  to  have  these 
images  slowly,  deliberately  burn  themselves  into  her 
brain,  and  to  be  aware,  at  the  same  time,  of  that  under- 
lying moral  disaster,  of  which  the  accident  seemed  the 
monstrous  outward  symbol — ah,  this  was  worse  than 
anything  she  had  ever  dreamed ! 

She  knew  that  the  final  verdict  could  not  be  pro- 
nounced till  the  operation  which  was  about  to  take 
place  should  reveal  the  extent  of  injury  to  the  spine. 
Bessy,  in  falling,  must  have  struck  on  the  back  of  her 
[  389  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

head  and  shoulders,  and  it  was  but  too  probable  that 
the  fractured  vertebra  had  caused  a  bruise  if  not  a  lesion 
of  the  spinal  cord.  In  that  case  paralysis  was  certain 
— and  a  slow  crawling  death  the  almost  inevitable  out- 
come. There  had  been  cases,  of  course — Justine's  pro- 
fessional memory  evoked  them — cases  of  so-called  "re- 
covery," where  actual  death  was  kept  at  bay,  a  sem- 
blance of  life  preserved  for  years  in  the  poor  petrified 
body.  .  .  But  the  mind  shrank  from  such  a  fate  for 
Bessy.  And  it  might  still  be  that  the  injury  to  the 
spine  was  not  grave — though,  here  again,  the  fractur- 
ing of  the  fourth  vertebra  was  ominous. 

The  door  opened  and  some  one  came  from  the  inner 
room — Wyant,  in  search  of  an  instrument-case.  Jus- 
tine turned  and  they  looked  at  each  other. 

"It  will  be  now?" 

"Yes.  Dr.  Garford  asked  if  there  was  no  one  you 
could  send  for." 

"No  one  but  Mr.Tredegar  and  the  Halford  Gaineses. 
They'll  be  here  this  evening,  I  suppose." 

They  exchanged  a  discouraged  glance,  knowing  how 
little  difference  the  presence  of  the  Halford  Gaineses 
would  make. 

"He  wanted  to  know  if  there  was  no  telegram  from 
Amherst." 

"No." 

"Then  they  mean  to  begin." 
[  390  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

A  nursemaid  appeared  in  the  doorway.  "Miss 
Cicely — "  she  said;  and  Justine  bounded  upstairs. 

The  day's  work  had  begun.  From  Cicely  to  the  gov- 
erness— from  the  governess  to  the  housekeeper — from 
the  telephone  to  the  writing -table — Justine  vibrated 
back  and  forth,  quick,  noiseless,  self-possessed — so- 
bering, guiding,  controlling  her  confused  and  pariic- 
stricken  world.  It  seemed  to  her  that  half  the  day  had 
elapsed  before  the  telegraph  office  at  Lynbrook  opened 
— she  was  at  the  telephone  at  the  stroke  of  the  hour. 
No  telegram  ?  Only  one — a  message  from  Halford 
Gaines — "Arrive  at  eight  tonight."  Amherst  was  still 
silent!  Was  there  a  difference  of  time  to  be  allowed 
for?  She  tried  to  remember,  to  calculate,  but  her 
brain  was  too  crowded  with  other  thoughts.  .  .  She 
turned  away  from  the  instrument  discouraged. 

Whenever  she  had  time  to  think,  she  was  over- 
whelmed by  the  weight  of  her  solitude.  Mr.  Langhope 
was  in  Egypt,  accessible  only  through  a  London  banker 
— Mrs.  Ansell  presumably  wandering  on  the  continent. 
Her  cables  might  not  reach  them  for  days.  And  among 
the  throng  of  Lynbrook  habitues,  she  knew  not  to  whom 
to  turn.  To  loose  the  Telfer  tribe  and  Mrs.  Carbury 
upon  that  stricken  house — her  thought  revolted  from 
it,  and  she  was  thankful  to  know  that  February  had 
dispersed  their  migratory  flock  to  southern  shores. 
But  if  only  Amherst  would  come! 
[391  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Cicely  and  the  tranquillized  governess  had  been  de- 
spatched on  a  walk  with  the  dogs,  and  Justine  was 
returning  upstairs  when  she  met  one  of  the  servants 
with  a  telegram.  She  tore  it  open  with  a  great  throb 
of  relief.  It  was  her  own  message  to  Amherst — ad- 
dress unknown.  .  . 

Had  she  misdirected  it,  then  ?  In  that  first  blinding 
moment  her  mind  might  so  easily  have  failed  her.  But 
no — there  was  the  name  of  the  town  before  her.  .  .  Mill- 
field,  Georgia.  .  .  the  same  name  as  in  his  letter.  .  . 
She  had  made  no  mistake,  but  he  was  gone!  Gone — 
and  without  leaving  an  address.  .  .  For  a  moment  her 
tired  mind  refused  to  work;  then  she  roused  herself, 
ran  down  the  stairs  again,  and  rang  up  the  telegraph- 
office.  The  thing  to  do,  of  course,  was  to  telegraph 
to  the  owner  of  the  mills — of  whose  very  name  she  was 
ignorant! — enquiring  where  Amherst  was,  and  asking 
him  to  forward  the  message.  Precious  hours  must  be 
lost  meanwhile — but,  after  all,  they  were  waiting  for 
no  one  upstairs. 

The  verdict  had  been  pronounced:  dislocation  and 
fracture  of  the  fourth  vertebra,  with  consequent  injury 
to  the  spinal  cord.  Dr.  Garford  and  Wyant  came  out 
alone  to  tell  her.  The  surgeon  ran  over  the  technical 
details,  her  brain  instantly  at  attention  as  he  developed 
his  diagnosis  and  issued  his  orders.  She  asked  no  ques- 
[  392  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

tions  as  to  the  future — she  knew  it  was  impossible  to 
tell.  But  there  were  no  immediate  signs  of  a  fatal 
ending:  the  patient  had  rallied  well,  and  the  general 
conditions  were  not  unfavourable. 

"You  have  heard  from  Mr.  Amherst?"  Dr.  Garford 
concluded. 

"Not  yet.  .  .  he  may  be  travelling,"  Justine  fal- 
tered, unwilling  to  say  that  her  telegram  had  been  re- 
turned. As  she  spoke  there  was  a  tap  on  the  door, 
and  a  folded  paper  was  handed  in — a  telegram  tele- 
phoned from  the  village. 

"Amherst  gone  South  America  to  study  possibilities 
cotton  growing  have  cabled  our  correspondent  Buenos 
Ayres." 

Concealment  was  no  longer  possible.  Justine 
handed  the  message  to  the  surgeon. 

"Ah — and  there  would  be  no  chance  of  finding  his 
address  among  Mrs.  Amherst's  papers?" 

"I  think  not— no." 

"Well — we  must  keep  her  alive,  Wyant." 

"Yes,  sir." 

At  dusk,  Justine  sat  in  the  library,  waiting  for  Cicely 
to  be  brought  to  her.  A  lull  had  descended  on  the 
house — a  new  order  developed  put  of  the  morning's 
chaos.  With  soundless  steps,  with  lowered  voices,  the 
machinery  of  life  was  carried  on.  And  Justine,  caught 
[  393  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

in  one  of  the  pauses  of  inaction  which  she  had  fought 
off  since  morning,  was  reliving,  for  the  hundredth  time, 
her  few  moments  at  Bessy's  bedside.  .  . 

She  had  been  summoned  in  the  course  of  the  after- 
noon, and  stealing  into  the  darkened  room,  had  bent 
over  the  bed  while  the  nurses  noiselessly  withdrew. 
There  lay  the  white  face  which  had  been  burnt  into 
her  inward  vision — the  motionless  body,  and  the  head 
stirring  ceaselessly,  as  though  to  release  the  agitation 
of  the  imprisoned  limbs.  Bessy's  eyes  turned  to  her, 
drawing  her  down. 

"Am  I  going  to  die,  Justine?" 

"No." 

"The  pain  is.  .  .  so  awful.  .  .  " 

"It  will  pass.  .  .  you  will  sleep.  .  .  " 

"Cicely " 

"She  has  gone  for  a  walk.  You'll  see  her  pres- 
ently." 

The  eyes  faded,  releasing  Justine.  She  stole  away, 
and  the  nurses  came  back. 

Bessy  had  spoken  of  Cicely — but  not  a  word  of  her 
husband!  Perhaps  her  poor  dazed  mind  groped  for 
him,  or  perhaps  it  shrank  from  his  name.  .  .  Justine 
was  thankful  for  her  silence.  For  the  moment  her 
heart  was  bitter  against  Amherst.  Why,  so  soon  after 
her  appeal  and  his  answer,  had  he  been  false  to  the 
spirit  of  their  agreement?  This  unannounced,  unex- 
[  394  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

plained  departure  was  nothing  less  than  a  breach  of 
his  tacit  pledge — the  pledge  not  to  break  definitely  with 
Lynbrook.  And  why  had  he  gone  to  South  America  ? 
She  drew  her  aching  brows  together,  trying  to  retrace 
a  vague  memory  of  some  allusion  to  the  cotton-growing 
capabilities  of  the  region.  .  .  Yes,  he  had  spoken  of  it 
once  in  talking  of  the  world's  area  of  cotton  production. 
But  what  impulse  had  sent  him  off  on  such  an  explo- 
ration ?  Mere  unrest,  perhaps — the  intolerable  burden 
of  his  useless  life?  The  questions  spun  round  and 
round  in  her  head,  weary,  profitless,  yet  persistent.  .  . 

It  was  a  relief  when  Cicely  came — a  relief  to  measure 
out  the  cambric  tea,  to  make  the  terrier  beg  for  ginger- 
bread, even  to  take  up  the  thread  of  the  interrupted 
fairy-tale — though  through  it  all  she  was  wrung  by  the 
thought  that,  just  twenty-four  hours  earlier,  she  and 
the  child  had  sat  in  the  same  place,  listening  for  the 
trot  of  Bessy's  horse.  .  . 

The  day  passed:  the  hands  of  the  clocks  moved, 
food  was  cooked  and  served,  blinds  were  drawn  up  or 
down,  lamps  lit  and  fires  renewed.  .  .  all  these  tokens 
of  the  passage  of  time  took  place  before  her,  while  her 
real  consciousness  seemed  to  hang  in  some  dim  central 
void,  where  nothing  happened,  nothing  would  ever 
happen.  .  . 

And  now  Cicely  was  in  bed,  the  last  "long-distance" 
call  was  answered,  the  last  orders  to  kitchen  and  stable 
[  395  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

had  been  despatched,  Wyant  had  stolen  down  to  her 
with  his  hourly  report — "no  change" — and  she  was 
waiting  in  the  library  for  the  Gaineses. 

Carriage- wheels  on  the  gravel:  they  were  there  at 
last.  Justine  started  up  and  went  into  the  hall. 
As  she  passed  out  of  the  library  the  outer  door 
opened,  and  the  gusty  night  swooped  in — as,  at  the 
same  hour  the  day  before,  it  had  swooped  in  ahead  of 
the  dreadful  procession — preceding  now  the  carriageful 
of  Hanaford  relations:  Mr.  Gaines,  red-glazed,  brief 
and  interrogatory;  Westy,  small,  nervous,  ill  at  ease 
with  his  grief;  and  Mrs.  Gaines,  supreme  in  the  pos- 
session of  a  consolatory  yet  funereal  manner,  and  sink- 
ing on  Justine's  breast  with  the  solemn  whisper:  "Have 
you  sent  for  the  clergyman  ?  " 

XXVII 

THE  house  was  empty  again. 
A  week  had  passed  since  Bessy's  accident,  and 
friends  and  relations  had  dispersed.  The  household 
had  fallen  into  its  routine,  the  routine  of  sickness  and 
silence,  and  once  more  the  perfectly-adjusted  machine 
was  working  on  steadily,  inexorably,  like  a  natural 
law.  .  . 

So  at  least  it  seemed  to  Justine's  nerves,  intolerably 
stretched,  at  times,  on  the  rack  of  solitude,  of  suspense, 
[  396  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

of  forebodings.  She  had  been  thankful  when  the 
Gaineses  left — doubly  thankful  when  a  telegram  from 
Bermuda  declared  Mrs.  Carbury  to  be  "in  despair"  at 
her  inability  to  fly  to  Bessy's  side — thankful  even  that 
Mr.  Tredegar's  professional  engagements  made  it  im- 
possible for  him  to  do  more  than  come  down,  every 
second  or  third  day,  for  a  few  hours;  yet,  though  in 
some  ways  it  was  a  relief  to  be  again  in  sole  command, 
there  were  moments  when  the  weight  of  responsibility, 
and  the  inability  to  cry  out  her  fears  and  her  uncer- 
tainties, seemed  almost  unendurable. 

Wyant  was  her  chief  reliance.  He  had  risen  so  gal- 
lantly above  his  weakness,  become  again  so  completely 
the  indefatigable  worker  of  former  days,  that  she 
accused  herself  of  injustice  in  ascribing  to  physical 
causes  the  vague  eye  and  tremulous  hand  which  might 
merely  have  betokened  a  passing  access  of  nervous 
sensibility.  Now,  at  any  rate,  he  had  his  nerves  so 
well  under  control,  and  had  shown  such  a  grasp  of  the 
case,  and  such  marked  executive  capacity,  that  on  the 
third  day  after  the  accident  Dr.  Garford,  withdrawing 
his  own  assistant,  had  left  him  in  control  at  Lynbrook. 

At  the  same  time  Justine  had  taken  up  her  attend- 
ance in  the  sick-room,  replacing  one  of  the  subordinate 
nurses  who  had  been  suddenly  called  away.  She  had 
done  this  the  more  willingly  because  Bessy,  who  was 
now  conscious  for  the  greater  part  of  the  time,  had 
[  397  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

asked  for  her  once  or  twice,  and  had  seemed  easier 
when  she  was  in  the  room.  But  she  still  gave  only 
occasional  aid,  relieving  the  other  nurses  when  they 
dined  or  rested,  but  keeping  herself  partly  free  in  order 
to  have  an  eye  on  the  household,  and  give  a  few  hours 
daily  to  Cicely. 

All  this  had  become  part  of  a  system  that  already 
seemed  as  old  as  memory.  She  could  hardly  recall 
what  life  had  been  before  the  accident — the  seven 
dreadful  days  seemed  as  long  as  the  days  of  creation. 
Every  morning  she  rose  to  the  same  report — "no 
change" — and  every  day  passed  without  a  word  from 
Amherst.  Minor  news,  of  course,  had  come :  poor  Mr. 
Langhope,  at  length  overtaken  at  Wady  Haifa,  was 
hastening  back  as  fast  as  ship  and  rail  could  carry  him; 
Mrs.  Ansell,  anchored  at  Algiers  with  her  invalid,  cabled 
anxious  enquiries;  but  still  no  word  from  Amherst. 
The  correspondent  at  Buenos  Ayres  had  simply  cabled 
"Not  here.  Will  enquire" — and  since  then,  silence. 

Justine  had  taken  to  sitting  in  a  small  room  beyond 
Amherst's  bedroom,  near  enough  to  Bessy  to  be  within 
call,  yet  accessible  to  the  rest  of  the  household.  The 
walls  were  hung  with  old  prints,  and  with  two  or  three 
photographs  of  early  Italian  pictures;  and  in  a  low 
bookcase  Amherst  had  put  the  books  he  had  brought 
from  Hanaford — the  English  poets,  the  Greek  dram- 
atists, some  text-books  of  biology  and  kindred  sub- 
[  398  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

jects,  and  a  few  stray  well- worn  volumes:  Lecky's 
European  Morals,  Carlyle's  translation  of  Wilhelm 
Meister,  Seneca,  Epictetus,  a  German  grammar,  a 
pocket  Bacon. 

It  was  unlike  any  other  room  at  Lynbrook — even 
through  her  benumbing  misery,  Justine  felt  the  relief  of 
escaping  there  from  the  rest  of  the  great  soulless  house. 
Sometimes  she  took  up  one  of  the  books  and  read  a 
page  or  two,  letting  the  beat  of  the  verse  lull  her  throb- 
bing brain,  or  the  strong  words  of  stoic  wisdom  sink 
into  her  heart.  And  even  when  there  was  no  time  for 
these  brief  flights  from  reality,  it  soothed  her  to  feel 
herself  in  the  presence  of  great  thoughts — to  know  that 
in  this  room,  among  these  books,  another  restless 
baffled  mind  had  sought  escape  from  the  "dusty  an- 
swer" of  life.  Her  hours  there  made  her  think  less 
bitterly  of  Amherst — but  also,  alas,  made  her  see  more 
clearly  the  irreconcilable  difference  between  the  two 
natures  she  had  striven  to  reunite.  That  which  was 
the  essence  of  life  to  one  was  a  meaningless  shadow  to 
the  other;  and  the  gulf  between  them  was  too  wide  for 
the  imagination  of  either  to  bridge. 

As  she  sat  there  on  the  seventh  afternoon  there  was 
a  knock  on  the  door  and  Wyant  entered.  She  had 
only  time  to  notice  that  he  was  very  pale — she  had  been 
struck  once  or  twice  with  his  look  of  sudden  exhaustion, 
which  passed  as  quickly  as  it  came — then  she  saw  that 
[  399  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

he  carried  a  telegram,  and  her  mind  flew  back  to  its 
central  anxiety.  She  grew  pale  herself  as  she  read  the 
message. 

"He  has  been  found — at  Corrientes.  It  will  take 
him  at  least  a  month  to  get  here." 

"A  month— good  God!" 

"And  it  may  take  Mr.  Langhope  longer."  Their 
eyes  met.  "It's  too  long ?"  she  asked. 

"  I  don't  know — I  don't  know."  He  shivered  slightly, 
turning  away  into  the  window. 

Justine  sat  down  to  dash  off  messages  to  Mr.  Trede- 
gar  and  the  Gaineses:  Amherst's  return  must  be  made 
known  at  once.  When  she  glanced  up,  Wyant  was 
standing  near  her.  His  air  of  intense  weariness  had 
passed,  and  he  looked  calm  and  ready  for  action. 

"Shall  I  take  these  down  ?" 

"No.  Ring,  please.  I  want  to  ask  you  a  few 
questions." 

The  servant  who  answered  the  bell  brought  in  a  tea- 
tray,  and  Justine,  having  despatched  the  telegrams, 
seated  herself  and  began  to  pour  out  her  tea.  Food 
had  been  repugnant  to  her  during  the  first  anguished 
unsettled  days,  but  with  the  resumption  of  the  nurse's 
systematic  habits  the  nurse's  punctual  appetite  re- 
turned. Every  drop  of  energy  must  be  husbanded 
now,  and  only  sleep  and  nourishment  could  fill  the 
empty  cisterns. 

[  400  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

She  held  out  a  cup  to  Wyant,  but  he  drew  back 
with  a  gesture  of  aversion. 

"Thanks;   I'm  not  hungry." 

"You  ought  to  eat  more." 

"No,  no.     I'm  very  well." 

She  lifted  her  head,  revived  by  the  warm  draught. 
The  mechanical  act  of  nourishment  performed,  her 
mind  leapt  back  to  the  prospect  of  Amherst's  return. 
A  whole  month  before  he  reached  Lynbrook!  He  had 
instructed  her  where  news  might  find  him  on  the 
way.  .  .  but  a  whole  month  to  wait! 

She  looked  at  Wyant,  and  they  read  each  other's 
thoughts. 

"It's  a  long  time,"  he  said 

"Yes." 

"But  Garford  can  do  wonders — and  she's  very 
strong." 

Justine  shuddered.  Just  so  a  skilled  agent  of  the 
Inquisition  might  have  spoken,  calculating  how  much 
longer  the  power  of  suffering  might  be  artificially  pre- 
served in  a  body  broken  on  the  wheel.  .  . 

"How  does  she  seem  to  you  today?" 

"The  general  conditions  are  about  the  same.  The 
heart  keeps  up  wonderfully,  but  there  is  a  little  more 
oppression  of  the  diaphragm." 

"Yes — her  breathing  is  harder.  Last  night  she  suf- 
fered horribly  at  times." 

[401] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Oh — she'll  suffer,"  Wyant  murmured.  "Of  course 
the  hypodermics  can  be  increased." 

"Just  what  did  Dr.  Garford  say  this  morning?" 

"He  is  astonished  at  her  strength." 

"But  there's  no  hope? — I  don't  know  why  I  ask!" 

"Hope?"  Wyant  looked  at  her.  "You  mean  of 
what's  called  recovery — of  deferring  death  indefi- 
nitely ?" 

She  nodded. 

"How  can  Garford  tell — or  any  one?  ,We  all  know 
there  have  been  cases  where  such  injury  to  the  cord 
has  not  caused  death.  This  may  be  one  of  those  cases; 
but  the  biggest  man  couldn't  say  now." 

Justine  hid  her  eyes.     "What  a  fate!" 

"Recovery?  Yes.  Keeping  people  alive  in  such 
cases  is  one  of  the  refinements  of  cruelty  that  it  was 
left  for  Christianity  to  invent." 

"And  yet—?" 

"And  yet — it's  got  to  be!  Science  herself  says  so — 
not  for  the  patient,  of  course;  but  for  herself — for  un- 
born generations,  rather.  Queer,  isn't  it?  The  two 
creeds  are  at  one." 

Justine  murmured  through  her  clasped  hands:  "I 
wish  she  were  not  so  strong — 

"Yes;  it's  wonderful  what  those  frail  petted  bodies 
can  stand.  The  fight  is  going  to  be  a  hard  one." 

She  rose  with  a  shiver.     "  I  must  go  to  Cicely " 

[  402  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

The  rector  of  Saint  Anne's  had  called  again.  Justine, 
in  obedience  to  Mrs.  Gaines's  suggestion,  had  sum- 
moned him  from  Clifton  the  day  after  the  accident; 
but,  supported  by  the  surgeons  and  Wyant,  she  had 
resisted  his  admission  to  the  sick-room.  Bessy's  re- 
ligious practices  had  been  purely  mechanical:  her 
faith  had  never  been  associated  with  the  graver  mo- 
ments of  her  life,  and  the  apparition  of  a  clerical  figure 
at  her  bedside  would  portend  not  consolation  but 
calamity.  Since  it  was  all-important  that  her  nervous 
strength  should  be  sustained,  and  the  gravity  of  the 
situation  kept  from  her,  Mrs.  Gaines  yielded  to 
the  medical  commands,  consoled  by  the  ready  acquies- 
cence of  the  rector.  But  before  she  left  she  extracted 
a  promise  that  he  would  call  frequently  at  Lynbrook, 
and  wait  his  opportunity  to  say  an  uplifting  word  to 
Mrs.  Amherst. 

The  Reverend  Ernest  Lynde,  who  was  a  young  man, 
with  more  zeal  than  experience,  deemed  it  his  duty  to 
obey  this  injunction  to  the  letter;  but  hitherto  he  had 
had  to  content  himself  with  a  talk  with  the  housekeeper, 
or  a  brief  word  on  the  doorstep  from  Wyant.  Today, 
however,  he  had  asked  somewhat  insistently  for  Miss 
Brent;  and  Justine,  who  was  free  at  the  moment,  felt 
that  she  could  not  refuse  to  go  down.  She  had  seen 
him  only  in  the  pulpit,  when  once  or. twice,  in  Bessy's 
absence,  she  had  taken  Cicely  to  church:  he  struck 
[  403  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

her  as  a  grave  young  man,  with  a  fine  voice 
but  halting  speech.  His  sermons  were  earnest  but 
ineffective. 

As  he  rose  to  meet  her,  she  felt  that  she  should  like 
him  better  out  of  church.  His  glance  was  clear  and 
honest,  and  there  was  sweetness  in  his  hesitating  smile. 

{<I  am  sorry  to  seem  persistent — but  I  heard  you  had 
news  of  Mr.  Langhope,  and  I  was  anxious  to  know  the 
particulars,"  he  explained. 

Justine  replied  that  her  message  had  overtaken  Mr. 
Langhope  at  Wady  Haifa,  and  that  he  hoped  to  reach 
Alexandria  in  time  to  catch  a  steamer  fo  Brindisi  at 
the  end  of  the  week. 

"  Not  till  then  ?    So  it  will  be  almost  three  weeks—  ?  " 

"As  nearly  as  I  can  calculate,  a  month." 

The  rector  hesitated.     "And  Mr.  Amherst?" 

"He  is  coming  back  too." 

"Ah,  you  have  heard?  I'm  glad  of  that.  He  will 
be  here  soon?" 

"No.  He  is  in  South  America — at  Buenos  Ayres. 
There  will  be  no  steamer  for  some  days,  and  he  may 
not  get  here  till  after  Mr.  Langhope." 

Mr.  Lynde  looked  at  her  kindly,  with  grave  eyes 
that  proffered  help.  "This  is  terrible  for  you,  Miss 
Brent." 

"Yes,"  Justine  answered  simply. 

"And  Mrs.  Amherst's  condition ?" 

[  404  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"It  is  about  the  same." 

"The  doctors  are  hopeful?" 

"They  have  not  lost  hope." 

"She  seems  to  keep  her  strength  wonderfully." 

"Yes,  wonderfully." 

Mr.  Lynde  paused,  looking  downward,  and  awk- 
wardly turning  his  soft  clerical  hat  in  his  large  kind- 
looking  hands.  "One  might  almost  see  in  it  a  dis- 
pensation— we  should  see  one,  Miss  Brent." 

"We?"  She  glanced  up  apologetically,  not  quite 
sure  that  her  tired  mind  had  followed  his  meaning. 

"We,  I  mean,  who  believe  .  .  .  that  not  one  sparrow 
falls  to  the  ground.  .  ."  He  flushed,  and  went  on  in 
a  more  mundane  tone:  "I  am  glad  you  have  the  hope 
of  Mr.  Langhope's  arrival  to  keep  you  up.  Modern 
science — thank  heaven! — can  do  such  wonders  in  sus- 
taining and  prolonging  life  that,  even  if  there  is  little 
chance  of  recovery,  the  faint  spark  may  be  nursed 
until.  .  ." 

He  paused  again,  conscious  that  the  dusky-browed 
young  woman,  slenderly  erect  in  her  dark  blue  linen 
and  nurse's  cap,  was  examining  him  with  an  intentness 
which  contrasted  curiously  with  the  absent-minded 
glance  she  had  dropped  on  him  in  entering. 

"In  such  cases,"  she  said  in  a  low  tone,  "there  is 
practically  no  chance  of  recovery." 

"So  I  understand." 

[  405  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"  Even  if  there  were,  it  would  probably  be  death-in- 
life:  complete  paralysis  of  the  lower  body." 

He  shuddered.  "A  dreadful  fate!  She  was  so  gay 
and  active — 

"Yes — and  the  struggle  with  death,  for  the  next  few 
weeks,  must  involve  incessant  suffering.  .  .  frightful 
suffering.  .  .  perhaps  vainly.  .  ." 

"I  feared  so,"  he  murmured,  his  kind  face  paling. 

"Then  why  do  you  thank  heaven  that  modern  science 
has  found  such  wonderful  ways  of  prolonging  life?" 

He  raised  his  head  with  a  start  and  their  eyes  met. 
He  saw  that  the  nurse's  face  was  pale  and  calm — 
almost  judicial  in  its  composure — and  his  self-possession 
returned  to  him. 

"As  a  Christian,"  he  answered,  with  his  slow  smile, 
"I  can  hardly  do  otherwise." 

Justine  continued  to  consider  him  thoughtfully.  "  The 
men  of  the  older  generation — clergymen,  I  mean,"  she 
went  on  in  a  low  controlled  voice,  "would  of  course 
take  that  view — must  take  it.  But  the  conditions  are 
so  changed — so  many  undreamed-of  means  of  prolong- 
ing life — prolonging  suffering — have  been  discovered 
and  applied  in  the  last  few  years,  that  I  wondered.  .  . 
in  my  profession  one  often  wonders.  .  ." 

"I  understand,"  he  rejoined  sympathetically,  for- 
getting his  youth  and  his  inexperience  in  the  simple 
desire  to  bring  solace  to  a  troubled  mind.  "I  under- 
[406] 


stand  your  feeling — but  you  need  have  no  doubt.  Hu- 
man life  is  sacred,  and  the  fact  that,  even  in  this  ma- 
terialistic age,  science  is  continually  struggling  to 
preserve  and  prolong  it,  shows — very  beautifully,  I 
think — how  all  things  work  together  to  fulfill  the  divine 
will." 

"Then  you  believe  that  the  divine  will  delights  in 
mere  pain — mere  meaningless  animal  suffering — for  its 
own  sake?" 

"Surely  not;  but  for  the  sake  of  the  spiritual  life 
that  may  be  mysteriously  wrung  out  of  it." 

Justine  bent  her  puzzled  brows  on  him.  "I  could 
understand  that  view  of  moral  suffering — or  even  of 
physical  pain  moderate  enough  to  leave  the  mind  clear, 
and  to  call  forth  qualities  of  endurance  and  renuncia- 
tion. But  where  the  body  has  been  crushed  to  a  pulp, 
and  the  mind  is  no  more  than  a  machine  for  the  regis- 
tering of  sense-impressions  of  physical  anguish,  of 
what  use  can  such  suffering  be  to  its  owner — or  to  the 
divine  will?" 

The  young  rector  looked  at  her  sadly,  almost  severely. 
"There,  Miss  Brent,  we  touch  on  inscrutable  things, 
and  human  reason  must  leave  the  answer  to  faith." 

Justine  pondered.  "So  that — one  may  say — Chris- 
tianity recognizes  no  exceptions — ?" 

"None — none,"  its  authorized  exponent  pronounced 
emphatically. 

[407] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Then  Christianity  and  science  are  agreed."  She 
rose,  and  the  young  rector,  with  visible  reluctance, 
stood  up  also. 

"That,  again,  is  one  of  the  most  striking  evi- 
dences— "  he  began ;  and  then,  as  the  necessity  of  tak- 
ing leave  was  forced  upon  him,  he  added  appealingly: 
"I  understand  your  uncertainties,  your  questionings, 
and  I  wish  I  could  have  made  my  point  clearer " 

"Thank  you;  it  is  quite  clear.  The  reasons,  of 
course,  are  different;  but  the  result  is  exactly  the  same." 

She  held  out  her  hand,  smiling  sadly  on  him,  and 
with  a  sudden  return  of  youth  and  self-consciousness, 
he  murmured  shyly:  "I  feel  for  you" — the  man  in  him 
yearning  over  her  loneliness,  though  the  pastor  dared  not 
press  his  help.  .  . 

XXVIII 

THAT  evening,  when  Justine  took  her  place  at  the 
bedside,  and  the  other  two  nurses  had  gone  down 
to  supper,  Bessy  turned  her  head  slightly,  resting  her 
eyes  on  her  friend. 

The  rose-shaded  lamp  cast  a  tint  of  life  on  her  face, 
and  the  dark  circles  of  pain  made  her  eyes  look  deeper 
and  brighter.  Justine  was  almost  deceived  by  the  de- 
lusive semblance  of  vitality,  and  a  hope  that  was  half 
anguish  stirred  in  her.  She  sat  down  by  the  bed,  clasp- 
ing the  hand  on  the  sheet. 

[  408  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"You  feel  better  tonight?" 

"I  breathe.  .  .  better.  .  ."  The  words  came  bro- 
kenly, between  long  pauses,  but  without  the  hard 
agonized  gasps  of  the  previous  night. 

"That's  a  good  sign."  Justine  paused,  and  then, 
letting  her  fingers  glide  once  or  twice  over  the  back  of 
Bessy's  hand — "You  know,  dear,  Mr.  Amherst  is 
coming,"  she  leaned  down  to  say. 

Bessy's  eyes  moved  again,  slowly,  inscrutably.  She 
had  never  asked  for  her  husband. 

"Soon?"  she  whispered. 

"He  had  started  on  a  long  journey — to  out-of-the- 
way  places — to  study  something  about  cotton  growing 
— my  message  has  just  overtaken  him,"  Justine  ex- 
plained. 

Bessy  lay  still,  her  breast  straining  for  breath.  She 
remained  so  long  without  speaking  that  Justine  began 
to  think  she  was  falling  back  into  the  somnolent  state 
that  intervened  between  her  moments  of  complete  con- 
sciousness. But  at  length  she  lifted  her  lids  again,  and 
her  lips  stirred. 

"He  will  be.  .  .  long.  .  .  coming?" 

"Some  days." 

"How.  .  .  many?" 

"We  can't  tell  yet." 

Silence  again.  Bessy's  features  seemed  to  shrink 
into  a  kind  of  waxen  quietude — as  though  her  face 
[  409  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

were  seen  under  clear  water,  a  long  way  down.  And 
then,  as  she  lay  thus,  without  sound  or  movement,  two 
tears  forced  themselves  through  her  lashes  and  rolled 
down  her  cheeks. 

Justine,  bending  close,  wiped  them  away.  "Bessy — " 

The  wet  lashes  were  raised — an  anguished  look  met 
her  gaze. 

"I— I  can't  bear  it.  .  ." 

"What,  dear?" 

"The  pain.  .  .  Shan't  I  die.  .  .  before?" 

"You  may  get  well,  Bessy." 

Justine  felt  her  hand  quiver.     "Walk  again.  .  .?" 

"Perhaps.  .  .  not  that." 

"  This  ?      I  can't  bear  it.  .  ."      Her  head  drooped 
sideways,  turning  away  toward  the  wall. 

Justine,  that  night,  kept  her  vigil  with  an  aching 
heart.  The  news  of  Amherst's  return  had  produced 
no  sign  of  happiness  in  his  wife — the  tears  had  been 
forced  from  her  merely  by  the  dread  of  being  kept 
alive  during  the  long  days  of  pain  before  he  came. 
The  medical  explanation  might  have  been  that  repeated 
crises  of  intense  physical  anguish,  and  the  deep  lassitude 
succeeding  them,  had  so  overlaid  all  other  feelings,  or 
at  least  so  benumbed  their  expression,  that  it  was  im- 
possible to  conjecture  how  Bessy's  little  half-smothered 
spark  of  soul  had  really  been  affected  by  the  news. 
But  Justine  did  not  believe  in  this  argument.  Her  ex- 
[410] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

perience  among  the  sick  had  convinced  her,  on  the  con- 
trary, that  the  shafts  of  grief  or  joy  will  find  a  crack  in 
the  heaviest  armour  of  physical  pain,  that  the  tiniest 
gleam  of  hope  will  light  up  depths  of  mental  inanition, 
and  somehow  send  a  ray  to  the  surface.  .  .  It  was 
true  that  Bessy  had  never  known  how  to  bear  pain, 
and  that  her  own  sensations  had  always  formed  the 
centre  of  her  universe — yet,  for  that  very  reason,  if  the 
thought  of  seeing  Amherst  had  made  her  happier  it 
would  have  lifted,  at  least  momentarily,  the  weight  of 
death  from  her  body. 

Justine,  at  first,  had  almost  feared  the  contrary  effect 
— feared  that  the  moral  depression  might  show  itself 
in  a  lowering  of  physical  resistance.  But  the  body 
kept  up  its  obstinate  struggle  against  death,  drawing 
strength  from  sources  of  vitality  unsuspected  in  that 
frail  envelope.  The  surgeon's  report  the  next  day  was 
more  favourable,  and  every  day  won  from  death 
pointed  now  to  a  faint  chance  of  recovery. 

Such  at  least  was  Wyant's  view.  Dr.  Garford  and 
the  consulting  surgeons  had  not  yet  declared  them- 
selves; but  the  young  doctor,  strung  to  the  highest 
point  of  watchfulness,  and  constantly  in  attendance  on 
the  patient,  was  tending  toward  a  hopeful  prognosis. 
The  growing  conviction  spurred  him  to  fresh  efforts; 
at  Dr.  Garford's  request,  he  had  temporarily  handed 
over  his  Clifton  practice  to  a  young  New  York  doctor 
[411] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

in  need  of  change,  and  having  installed  himself  at  Lyn- 
brook  he  gave  up  his  days  and  nights  to  Mrs.  Am- 
herst's  case. 

"If  any  one  can  save  her,  Wyant  will,"  Dr.  Garford 
had  declared  to  Justine,  when,  on  the  tenth  day  after 
the  accident,  the  surgeons  held  their  third  consultation. 
Dr.  Garford  reserved  his  own  judgment.  He  had  seen 
cases — they  had  all  seen  cases.  .  .  but  just  at  present 
the  signs  might  point  either  way.  .  .  Meanwhile  Wy- 
ant's  confidence  was  an  invaluable  asset  toward  the 
patient's  chances  of  recovery.  Hopefulness  in  the  phy- 
sician was  almost  as  necessary  as  in  the  patient — 
contact  with  such  faith  had  been  known  to  work 
miracles. 

Justine  listened  in  silence,  wishing  that  she  too  could 
hope.  But  whichever  way  the  prognosis  pointed,  she 
felt  only  a  dull  despair.  She  believed  no  more  than 
Dr.  Garford  in  the  chance  of  recovery — that  conviction 
seemed  to  her  a  mirage  of  Wyant's  imagination,  of  his 
boyish  ambition  to  achieve  the  impossible — and  every 
hopeful  symptom  pointed,  in  her  mind,  only  to  a  longer 
period  of  useless  suffering. 

Her  hours  at  Bessy's  side  deepened  her  revolt  against 
the  energy  spent  in  the  fight  with  death.  Since  Bessy 
had  learned  that  her  husband  was  returning  she  had 
never,  by  sign  or  word,  reverted  to  the  fact.  Except 
for  a  gleam  of  tenderness,  now  and  then,  when  Cicely 
[412] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

was  brought  to  her,  she  seemed  to  have  sunk  back  into 
herself,  as  though  her  poor  little  flicker  of  consciousness 
were  wholly  centred  in  the  contemplation  of  its  pain. 
It  was  not  that  her  mind  was  clouded — only  that  it  was 
immersed,  absorbed,  in  that  dread  mystery  of  dispro- 
portionate anguish  which  a  capricious  fate  had  laid  on 
it.  .  .  And  what  if  she  recovered,  as  they  called  it?  If 
the  flood-tide  of  pain  should  ebb,  leaving  her  stranded, 
a  helpless  wreck  on  the  desert  shores  of  inactivity? 
What  would  life  be  to  Bessy  without  movement? 
Thought  would  never  set  her  blood  flowing — motion,  in 
her,  could  only  take  the  form  of  the  physical  processes. 
Her  love  for  Amherst  was  dead — even  if  it  flickered 
into  life  again,  it  could  but  put  the  spark  to  smoulder- 
ing discords  and  resentments;  and  would  her  one 
uncontaminated  sentiment — her  affection  for  Cicely — 
suffice  to  reconcile  her  to  the  desolate  half-life  which 
was  the  utmost  that  science  could  hold  out? 

Here  again,  Justine's  experience  answered  no.  She 
did  not  believe  in  Bessy's  powers  of  moral  recupera- 
tion— her  body  seemed  less  near  death  than  her  spirit. 
Life  had  been  poured  out  to  her  in  generous  measure, 
and  she  had  spilled  the  precious  draught — the  few  drops 
remaining  in  the  cup  could  no  longer  renew  her  strength. 

Pity,  not  condemnation — profound  illimitable  pity — 
flowed  from  this  conclusion  of  Justine's.  To  a  com- 
passionate heart  there  could  be  no  sadder  instance  of 
[413] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

the  wastefulness  of  life  than  this  struggle  of  the  small 
half-formed  soul  with  a  destiny  too  heavy  for  its 
strength.  If  Bessy  had  had  any  moral  hope  to  fight 
for,  every  pang  of  suffering  would  have  been  worth 
enduring;  but  it  was  intolerable  to  witness  the  spec- 
tacle of  her  useless  pain. 

Incessant  commerce  with  such  thoughts  made  Jus- 
tine, as  the  days  passed,  crave  any  escape  from  soli- 
tude, any  contact  with  other  ideas.  Even  the  reap- 
pearance of  Westy  Gaines,  bringing  a  breath  of  com- 
mon-place conventional  grief  into  the  haunted  silence 
of  the  house,  was  a  respite  from  her  questionings.  If 
it  was  hard  to  talk  to  him,  to  answer  his  enquiries,  to 
assent  to  his  platitudes,  it  was  harder,  a  thousand  times, 
to  go  on  talking  to  herself.  .  . 

Mr.  Tredegar's  coming  was  a  distinct  relief.  His 
dryness  was  like  cautery  to  her  wound.  Mr.  Tredegar 
undoubtedly  grieved  for  Bessy;  but  his  grief  struck 
inward,  exuding  only  now  and  then,  through  the  fis- 
sures of  his  hard  manner,  in  a  touch  of  extra  solemnity, 
the  more  laboured  rounding  of  a  period.  Yet,  on  the 
whole,  it  was  to  his  feeling  that  Justine  felt  her  own  to 
be  most  akin.  If  his  stoic  acceptance  of  the  inevitable 
proceeded  from  the  resolve  to  spare  himself  pain,  that 
at  least  was  a  form  of  strength,  an  indication  of  char- 
acter. She  had  never  cared  for  the  fluencies  of  in- 
vertebrate sentiment.  * 
[414] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Now,  on  the  evening  of  the  day  after  her  talk  with 
Bessy,  it  was  more  than  ever  a  solace  to  escape  from 
the  torment  of  her  thoughts  into  the  rarefied  air  of  Mr. 
Tredegar's  presence.  The  day  had  been  a  bad  one 
for  the  patient,  and  Justine's  distress  had  been  in- 
creased by  the  receipt  of  a  cable  from  Mr.  Langhope, 
announcing  that,  owing  to  delay  in  reaching  Brindisi, 
he  had  missed  the  fast  steamer  from  Cherbourg,  and 
would  not  arrive  till  four  or  five  days  later  than  he  had 
expected.  Mr.  Tredegar,  in  response  to  her  report, 
had  announced  his  intention  of  coming  down  by  a  late 
train,  and  now  he  and  Justine  and  Dr.  Wyant,  after 
dining  together,  were  seated  before  the  fire  in  the 
smoking-room. 

"I  take  it,  then,"  Mr.  Tredegar  said,  turning  to 
Wyant,  "  that  the  chances  of  her  living  to  see  her  father 
are  very  slight." 

The  young  doctor  raised  his  head  eagerly.  "Not  in 
my  opinion,  sir.  Unless  unforeseen  complications  arise, 
I  can  almost  promise  to  keep  her  alive  for  another 
month — I'm  not  afraid  to  call  it  six  weeks!" 

"H'm — Garford  doesn't  say  so." 

"No;  Dr.  Garford  argues  from  precedent." 

"And  you?"  Mr.  Tredegar's  thin  lips  were  visited 
by  the  ghost  of  a  smile. 

"Oh,  I  don't  argue — I  just  feel  my  way,"  said  Wyant 
imperturbably. 

[415] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 
"And  yet  you  don't  hesitate  to  predict 


"No,  I  don't,  sir;  because  the  case,  as  I  see  it,  pre- 
sents certain  definite  indications."  He  began  to  enu- 
merate them,  cleverly  avoiding  the  use  of  technicalities 
and  trying  to  make  his  point  clear  by  the  use  of  simple 
illustration  and  analogy.  It  sickened  Justine  to  listen 
to  his  passionate  exposition — she  had  heard  it  so  often, 
she  believed  in  it  so  little. 

Mr.  Tredegai  turned  a  probing  glance  on  him  as  he 
ended.  'Then,  today  even,  you  believe  not  only  in  the 
possibility  of  prolonging  life,  but  of  ultimate  recovery  ?" 

Wyant  hesitated.  "I  won't  call  it  recovery — today. 
Say — life  indefinitely  prolonged." 

"And  the  paralysis?" 

"It  might  disappear — after  a  few  months- — or  a  few 
years." 

"Such  an  outcome  would  be  unusual?" 

"Exceptional.  But  then  there  are  exceptions.  And 
I'm  straining  every  nerve  to  make  this  one!" 

"And  the  suffering — such  as  today's,  for  instance — 
is  unavoidable?" 

"Unhappily." 

"And  bound  to  increase?" 

"Well — as  the  anaesthetics  lose  their  effect.  .  ." 

There  was  a  tap  on  the  door,  and  one  of  the  nurses 
entered  to  report  to  Wyant.     He  went  out  with  her,  and 
Justine  was  left  with  Mr.  Tredegar. 
[416] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

He  turned  to  her  thoughtfully.  "That  young  fellow 
seems  sure  of  himself.  You  believe  in  him  ?  " 

Justine  hesitated.  "Not  in  his  expectation  of  re- 
covery— no  one  does." 

"But  you  think  they  can  keep  the  poor  child  alive 
till  Langhope  and  her  husband  get  back?" 

There  was  a  moment's  pause;  then  Justine  mur- 
mured: "It  can  be  done.  .  .  I  think.  .  ." 

"Yes — it's  horrible,"  said  Mr.  Tredegar  suddenly, 
as  if  in  answer  to  her  thought. 

She  looked  up  in  surprise,  and  saw  his  eye  resting 
on  her  with  what  seemed  like  a  mist  of  sympathy  on 
its  vitreous  surface.  Her  lips  trembled,  parting  as  if 
for  speech — but  she  looked  away  without  answering. 

"These  new  devices  for  keeping  people  alive,"  Mr. 
Tredegar  continued;  "they  increase  the  suffering  be- 
sides prolonging  it?" 

"Yes — in  some  cases." 

"In  this  case?" 

"I  am  afraid  so." 

The  lawyer  drew  out  his  fine  cambric  handkerchief, 
and  furtively  wiped  a  slight  dampness  from  his  forehead. 
"I  wish  to  God  she  had  been  killed!"  he  said. 

Justine  lifted  her  head  again,  with  an  answering  ex- 
clamation. "Oh,  yes!" 

"It's  infernal — the  time  they  can  make  it  last." 

"It's  useless!"  Justine  broke  out. 
[417] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Useless?"  He  turned  his  critical  glance  on  her. 
"Well,  that's  beside  the  point — since  it's  inevitable." 

She  wavered  a  moment — but  his  words  had  loosened 
the  bonds  about  her  heart,  and  she  could  not  check 
herself  so  suddenly.  "Why  inevitable?" 

Mr.  Tredegar  looked  at  her  in  surprise,  as  though 
wondering  at  so  unprofessional  an  utterance  from  one 
who,  under  ordinary  circumstances,  showed  the  absolute 
self-control  and  submission  of  the  well-disciplined  nurse. 

"Human  life  is  sacred,"  he  said  sententiously. 

"Ah,  that  must  have  been  decreed  by  some  one  who 
had  never  suffered!"  Justine  exclaimed. 

Mr.  Tredegar  smiled  compassionately:  he  evidently 
knew  how  to  make  allowances  for  the  fact  that  she  was 
overwrought  by  the  sight  of  her  friend's  suffering. 
"Society  decreed  it — not  one  person,"  he  corrected. 

"Society — science — religion!"  she  murmured,  as  if 
to  herself. 

"Precisely.  It's  the  universal  consensus — the  result 
of  the  world's  accumulated  experience.  Cruel  in  in- 
dividual instances — necessary  for  the  general  welfare. 
Of  course  your  training  has  taught  you  all  this;  but  I 
can  understand  that  at  such  a  time.  .  ." 

"Yes,"  she  said,  rising  wearily  as  Wyant  came  in. 

Her  worst  misery,  now,  was  to  have  to  discuss  Bessy's 

condition  with  Wyant.     To  the  young  physician  Bessy 

[  418  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

was  no  longer  a  suffering,  agonizing  creature:  she  was 
a  case — a  beautiful  case.  As  the  problem  developed 
new  intricacies,  becoming  more  and  more  of  a  challenge 
to  his  faculties  of  observation  and  inference,  Justine  saw 
the  abstract  scientific  passion  supersede  his  personal 
feeling  of  pity.  Though  his  professional  skill  made  him 
exquisitely  tender  to  the  patient  under  his  hands,  he 
seemed  hardly  conscious  that  she  was  a  woman  who 
had  befriended  him,  and  whom  he  had  so  lately  seen 
in  the  brightness  of  health  and  enjoyment.  This  view 
was  normal  enough — it  was,  as  Justine  knew,  the  ideal 
state  of  mind  for  the  successful  physician,  in  whom 
sympathy  for  the  patient  as  an  individual  must  often 
impede  swift  choice  and  unfaltering  action.  But  what 
she  shrank  from  was  his  resolve  to  save  Bessy's  life — 
a  resolve  fortified  to  the  point  of  exasperation  by  the 
scepticism  of  the  consulting  surgeons,  who  saw  in  it 
only  the  youngster's  natural  desire  to  distinguish  him- 
self by  performing  a  feat  which  his  elders  deemed  im- 
possible. 

As  the  days  dragged  on,  and  Bessy's  sufferings  in- 
creased, Justine  longed  for  a  protesting  word  from 
Dr.  Garford  or  one  of  his  colleagues.  In  her 
hospital  experience  she  had  encountered  cases  where 
the  useless  agonies  of  death  were  mercifully  shortened 
by  the  physician;  why  was  not  this  a  case  for  such 
treatment?  The  answer  was  simple  enough — in  the 
[419  J 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

first  place,  it  was  the  duty  of  the  surgeons  to  keep 
their  patient  alive  till  her  husband  and  her  father  could 
reach  her;  and  secondly,  there  was  that  faint  illusive 
hope  of  so-called  recovery,  in  which  none  of  them  be- 
lieved, yet  which  they  could  not  ignore  in  their  treat- 
ment. The  evening  after  Mr.  Tredegar's  departure 
Wyant  was  setting  this  forth  at  great  length  to  Justine. 
Bessy  had  had  a  bad  morning:  the  bronchial  symp- 
toms which  had  developed  a  day  or  two  before  had 
greatly  increased  her  distress,  and  there  had  been,  at 
dawn,  a  moment  of  weakness  when  it  seemed  that 
some  pitiful  power  was  about  to  defeat  the  relentless 
efforts  of  science.  But  Wyant  had  fought  off  the  peril. 
By  the  prompt  and  audacious  use  of  stimulants — by  a 
rapid  marshalling  of  resources,  a  display  of  self-reliance 
and  authority,  which  Justine  could  not  but  admire  as 
she  mechanically  seconded  his  efforts — the  spark  of 
life  had  been  revived,  and  Bessy  won  back  for  fresh 
suffering. 

"Yes — I  say  it  can  be  done:  tonight  I  say  it  more 
than  ever,"  Wyant  exclaimed,  pushing  the  disordered 
hair  from  his  forehead,  and  leaning  toward  Justine 
across  the  table  on  which  their  brief  evening  meal  had 
been  served.  "I  say  the  way  the  heart  has  rallied 
proves  that  we've  got  more  strength  to  draw  on  than 
any  of  them  have  been  willing  to  admit.  The  breath- 
ing's better  too.  If  we  can  fight  off  the  degenerative 
[  420  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

processes — and,  by  George,  I  believe  we  can!"  He 
looked  up  suddenly  at  Justine.  "With  you  to  work 
with,  I  believe  I  could  do  anything.  How  you  do  back 
a  man  up!  You  think  with  your  hands — with  every 
individual  finger!" 

Justine  turned  her  eyes  away:  she  felt  a  shudder  of 
repulsion  steal  over  her  tired  body.  It  was  not  that 
she  detected  any  note  of  personal  admiration  in  his 
praise — he  had  commended  her  as  the  surgeon  might 
commend  a  fine  instrument  fashioned  for  his  use. 
But  that  she  should  be  the  instrument  to  serve  such  a 
purpose — that  her  skill,  her  promptness,  her  gift  of 
divining  and  interpreting  the  will  she  worked  with, 
should  be  at  the  service  of  this  implacable  scientific 
passion!  Ah,  no — she  could  be  silent  no  longer.  .  . 

She  looked  up  at  Wyant,  and  their  eyes  met. 

"Why  do  you  do  it?"  she  asked. 

He  stared,  as  if  thinking  that  she  referred  to  some 
special  point  in  his  treatment.  "Do  what?" 

"It's  so  useless.  .  .  you  all  know  she  must  die." 

"I  know  nothing  of  the  kind.  .  .  and  even  the  others 
are  not  so  sure  today."  He  began  to  go  over  it  all 
again — repeating  his  arguments,  developing  new  the- 
ories, trying  to  force  into  her  reluctant  mind  his  own 
faith  in  the  possibility  of  success. 

Justine  sat  resting  her  chin  on  her  clasped  hands,  her 
[  421  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

eyes  gazing  straight  before  her  under  dark  tormented 
brows.  When  he  paused  she  remained  silent. 

"Well — don't  you  believe  me?"  he  broke  out  with 
sudden  asperity. 

"I  don't  know.  .  .  I  can't  tell.  .  ." 

"But  as  long  as  there's  a  doubt,  even — a  doubt  my 
way — and  I'll  show  you  there  is,  if  you'll  give  me 
time " 

"How  much  time?"  she  murmured,  without  shifting 
her  gaze. 

"Ah — that  depends  on  ourselves:  on  you  and  me 
chiefly.  That's  what  Garford  admits.  They  can't  do 
much  now — they've  got  to  leave  the  game  to  us.  It's 
a  question  of  incessant  vigilance.  .  .  of  utilizing  every 
hour,  every  moment.  .  .  Time's  all  I  ask,  and  you 
can  give  it  to  me,  if  any  one  can!" 

Under  the  challenge  of  his  tone  Justine  rose  to  her 
feet  with  a  low  murmur  of  fear.  "Ah,  don't  ask  me!" 

"Don't  ask  you ?" 

"I  can't— I  can't." 

Wyant  stood  up  also,  turning  on  her  an  astonished 
glance. 

"You  can't  what—  ?" 

Their  eyes  met,  and  she  thought  she  read  in  his  a 
sudden  divination  of  her  inmost  thoughts.  The  dis- 
covery electrified  her  flagging  strength,  restoring  her 
to  immediate  clearness  of  brain.  She  saw  the  gulf  of 
[422] 


THE  FRUIT,  OF  THE  TREK 

self -betrayal  over  which  she  had  hung,  and  the  near- 
ness of  the  peril  nerved  her  to  a  last  effort  of  dissimula- 
tion. 

"I  can't.  .  .  talk  of  it.  .  .  any  longer,"  she  faltered, 
letting  her  tears  flow,  and  turning  on  him  a  face  of 
pure  womanly  weakness. 

Wyant  looked  at  her  without  answering.  Did  he 
distrust  even  these  plain  physical  evidences  of  ex- 
haustion, or  was  he  merely  disappointed  in  her,  as  in 
one  whom  he  had  believed  to  be  above  the  emotional 
failings  of  her  sex  ? 

"You're  over-tired,"  he  said  coldly.  "Take  tonight 
to  rest.  Miss  Mace  can  replace  you  for  the  next  few 
hours — and  I  may  need  you  more  tomorrow." 

XXIX 

FOUR  more  days  had  passed.  Bessy  seldom  spoke 
when  Justine  was  with  her.  She  was  wrapped  in 
a  thickening  cloud  of  opiates — morphia  by  day,  bro- 
mides, sulphonal,  chloral  hydrate  at  night.  When  the 
cloud  broke  and  consciousness  emerged,  it  was  centred 
in  the  one  acute  point  of  bodily  anguish.  Darting 
throes  of  neuralgia,  agonized  oppression  of  the  breath, 
the  diffused  misery  of  the  whole  helpless  body — these 
were  reducing  their  victim  to  a  mere  instrument  on 
which  pain  played  its  incessant  deadly  variations.  Once 
[  423  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

or  twice  she  turned  her  dull  eyes  on  Justine,  breathing 
out:  "I  want  to  die,"  as  some  inevitable  lifting  or  re- 
adjusting thrilled  her  body  with  fresh  pangs;  but  there 
were  no  signs  of  contact  with  the  outer  world — she  had 
ceased  even  to  ask  for  Cicely.  .  . 

And  yet,  according  to  the  doctors,  the  patient  held 
her  own.  Certain  alarming  symptoms  had  diminished, 
and  while  others  persisted,  the  strength  to  fight  them 
persisted  too.  With  such  strength  to  call  on,  what 
fresh  agonies  were  reserved  for  the  poor  body  when 
the  narcotics  had  lost  their  power? 

That  was  the  question  always  before  Justine.  She 
never  again  betrayed  her  fears  to  Wyant — she  carried 
out  his  orders  with  morbid  precision,  trembling  lest  any 
failure  in  efficiency  should  revive  his  suspicions.  She 
hardly  knew  what  she  feared  his  suspecting — she  only 
had  a  confused  sense  that  they  were  enemies,  and  that 
she  was  the  weaker  of  the  two. 

And  then  the  anaesthetics  began  to  fail.  It  was  the 
sixteenth  day  since  the  accident,  and  the  resources  of 
alleviation  were  almost  exhausted.  It  was  not  sure, 
even  now,  that  Bessy  was  going  to  die — and  she  was 
certainly  going  to  suffer  a  long  time.  Wyant  seemed 
hardly  conscious  of  the  increase  of  pain — his  whole 
mind  was  fixed  on  the  prognosis.  What  matter  if  the 
patient  suffered,  as  long  as  he  proved  his  case  ?  That, 
of  course,  was  not  his  way  of  putting  it.  In  reality, 
[  424  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

he  did  all  he  could  to  allay  the  pain,  surpassed  himself 
in  new  devices  and  experiments.  But  death  confronted 
him  implacably, claiming  his  due:  so  many  hours  robbed 
from  him,  so  much  tribute  to  pay;  and  Wyant,  setting 
his  teeth,  fought  on — and  Bessy  paid. 

Justine  had  begun  to  notice  that  it  was  hard  for  her  to 
get  a  word  alone  with  Dr.  Garford.  The  other  nurses 
were  not  in  the  way — it  was  Wyant  who  always  con- 
trived to  be  there.  Perhaps  she  was  unreasonable  in 
seeing  a  special  intention  in  his  presence:  it  was  nat- 
ural enough  that  the  two  persons  in  charge  of  the  case 
should  confer  together  with  their  chief.  But  his  per- 
sistence annoyed  her,  and  she  was  glad  when,  one 
afternoon,  the  surgeon  asked  him  to  telephone  an  im- 
portant message  to  town. 

As  soon  as  the  door  had  closed,  Justine  said  to  Dr. 
Garford:  "She  is  beginning  to  suffer  terribly." 

He  answered  with  the  large  impersonal  gesture  of  the 
man  to  whom  physical  suffering  has  become  a  painful 
general  fact  of  life,  no  longer  divisible  into  individual 
cases.  "We  are  doing  all  we  can." 

"Yes."  She  paused,  and  then  raised  her  eyes  to  his 
dry  kind  face.  "Is  there  any  hope?" 

Another  gesture — the  fatalistic  sweep  of  the  lifted 
palms.  "The  next  ten  days  will  tell — the  fight  is  on, 
as  Wyant  says.  And  if  any  one  can  do  it,  that  young 
[  425  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

fellow  can.  There's  stuff  in  him — and  infernal  ambi- 
tion." 

"Yes:  but  do  you  believe  she  can  live — ?" 

Dr.  Garford  smiled  indulgently  on  such  unprofes- 
sional insistence;  but  she  was  past  wondering  what 
they  must  all  think  of  her. 

"My  dear  Miss  Brent,"  he  said,  "I  have  reached  the 
age  when  one  always  leaves  a  door  open  to  the  un- 
expected." 

As  he  spoke,  a  slight  sound  at  her  back  made  her 
turn.  Wya*nt  was  behind  her — he  must  have  entered 
as  she  put  her  question.  And  he  certainly  could  not 
have  had  time  to  descend  the  stairs,  walk  the  length 
of  the  house,  ring  up  New  York,  and  deliver  Dr 
Garford's  message.  .  .  The  same  thought  seemed  to 
strike  the  surgeon.  "Hello,  Wyant?"  he  said. 

"Line  busy,"  said  Wyant  curtly. 

About  this  time,  Justine  gave  up  her  night  vigils.  She 
could  no  longer  face  the  struggle  of  the  dawn  hour, 
when  life  ebbs  lowest;  and  since  her  duties  extended 
beyond  the  sick-room  she  could  fairly  plead  that  she 
was  more  needed  about  the  house  by  day.  But  Wyant 
protested:  he  wanted  her  most  at  the  difficult  hour. 

"You  know  you're  taking  a  chance  from  her,"  he 
said,  almost  sternly. 

"Oh,  no " 

[426  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

He  looked  at  her  searchingly.  "You  don't  feel  up  to 
it?" 

"No." 

He  turned  away  with  a  slight  shrug;  but  she  knew  he 
resented  her  defection. 

The  day  watches  were  miserable  enough.  It  was  the 
nineteenth  day  now;  and  Justine  lay  on  the  sofa  in 
Amherst's  sitting-room,  trying  to  nerve  herself  for  the 
nurse's  summons.  A  page  torn  out  of  the  calendar  lay 
before  her — she  had  been  calculating  again  how  many 
days  must  elapse  before  Mr.  Langhope  could  arrive. 
Ten  days — ten  days  and  ten  nights !  And  the  length  of 
the  nights  was  double.  .  .  As  for  Amherst,  it  was 
impossible  to  set  a  date  for  his  coming,  for  his  steamer 
from  Buenos  Ayres  called  at  various  ports  on  the  way 
northward,  and  the  length  of  her  stay  at  each  was  de- 
pendent on  the  delivery  of  freight,  and  on  the  dilatori- 
ness  of  the  South  American  official. 

She  threw  down  the  calendar  and  leaned  back, 
pressing  her  hands  to  her  temples.  Oh,  for  a  word 
with  Amherst — he  alone  would  have  understood  what 
she  was  undergoing!  Mr.  Langhope's  coming  would 
make  no  difference — or  rather,  it  would  only  increase 
the  difficulty  of  the  situation.  Instinctively  Justine 
felt  that,  though  his  heart  would  be  wrung  by  the  sight 
of  Bessy's  pain,  his  cry  would  be  the  familiar  one, 
the  traditional  one:  Keep  her  alive!  Under  his  sur- 
£427] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

face  originality,  his  verbal  audacities  and  ironies,  Mr. 
Langhope  was  the  creature  of  accepted  forms,  inherited 
opinions:  he  had  never  really  thought  for  himself  on 
any  of  the  pressing  problems  of  life. 

But  Amherst  was  different.  Close  contact  with  many 
forms  of  wretchedness  had  freed  him  from  the  bondage 
of  accepted  opinion.  He  looked  at  life  through  no  eyes 
but  his  own;  and  what  he  saw,  he  confessed  to  seeing. 
He  never  tried  to  evade  the  consequences  of  his  dis- 
coveries. 

Justine's  remembrance  flew  back  to  their  first  meet- 
ing at  Hanaford,  when  his  confidence  in  his  own  powers 
was  still  unshaken,  his  trust  in  others  unimpaired. 
And,  gradually,  she  began  to  relive  each  detail  of  their 
talk  at  Dillon's  bedside — her  first  impression  of  him, 
as  he  walked  down  the  ward;  the  first  sound  of  his 
voice;  her  surprised  sense  of  his  authority;  her  almost 
involuntary  submission  to  his  will.  .  .  Then  her 
thoughts  passed  on  to  their  walk  home  from  the  hos- 
pital— she  recalled  his  sober  yet  unsparing  summary  of 
the  situation  at  Westmore,  and  the  note  of  insight  with 
which  he  touched  on  the  hardships  of  the  workers.  .  . 
Then,  word  by  word,  their  talk  about  Dillon  came 
back.  .  .  Amherst's  indignation  and  pity.  .  .  his  shudder 
of  revolt  at  the  man's  doom. 

"In  your  work,  don't  you  ever  feel  tempted  to  set  a 
poor  devil  free?"  And  then,  after  her  conventional 
[  428  J 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

murmur  of  protest:  "  To  save  what,  when  all  the  good 
of  life  is  gone?" 

To  distract  her  thoughts  she  stretched  her  hand 
toward  the  book-case,  taking  out  the  first  volume  in 
reach — the  little  copy  of  Bacon.  She  leaned  back, 
fluttering  its  pages  aimlessly — so  wrapped  in  her  own 
misery  that  the  meaning  of  the  words  could  not  reach 
her.  It  was  useless  to  try  to  read :  every  perception  of 
the  outer  world  was  lost  in  the  hum  of  inner  activity 
that  made  her  mind  like  a  forge  throbbing  with  heat  and 
noise.  But  suddenly  her  glance  fell  on  some  pencilled 
sentences  on  the  fly-leaf.  They  were  in  Amherst's  hand, 
and  the  sight  arrested  her  as  though  she  had  heard 
him  speak. 

La  male  morale  se  moque  de  la  morale.  .  . 

We  perish  because  we  follow  other  men's  examples.  .  . 

Socrates  used  to  call  the  opinions  of  the  many  by  the 
name  of  Lamias — bugbears  to  frighten  children.  . . 

A  rush  of  air  seemed  to  have  been  let  into  her  stifled 
mind.  Were  they  his  own  thoughts?  No — her  mem- 
ory recalled  some  confused  association  with  great  names. 
But  at  least  they  must  represent  his  beliefs — must  em- 
body deeply-felt  convictions — or  he  would  scarcely  have 
taken  the  trouble  to  record  them. 

She  murmured  over  the  last  sentence  once  or  twice: 
The  opinions  of  the  many — bugbears  to  frighten  chil- 
dren. .  .  Yes,  she  had  often  heard  him  speak  of  cur- 
[  429  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

rent  judgments  in  that  way.  .  .  she  had  never  known 
a  mind. so  free  from  the  spell  of  the  Lamiae. 

Some  one  knocked,  and  she  put  aside  the  book  and 
rose  to  her  feet.  It  was  a  maid  bringing  a  note  from 
Wyant. 

"There  has  been  a  motor  accident  beyond  Clifton, 
and  I  have  been  sent  for.  I  think  I  can  safely  be  away 
for  two  or  three  hours,  but  ring  me  up  at  Clifton  if  you 
want  me.  Miss  Mace  has  instructions,  and  Garford's 
assistant  will  be  down  at  seven." 

She  looked  at  the  clock:  it  was  just  three,  the  hour 
at  which  she  was  to  relieve  Miss  Mace.  She  smoothed 
the  hair  from  her  forehead,  straightened  her  cap,  tied 
on  the  apron  she  had  laid  aside.  .  . 

As  she  entered  Bessy's  sitting-room  the  nurse  came 
out,  memoranda  in  hand.  The  two  moved  to  the  win- 
dow for  a  moment's  conference,  and  as  the  wintry  light 
fell  on  Miss  Mace's  face,  Justine  saw  that  it  was  white 
with  fatigue. 

"You're  ill!"  she  exclaimed. 

The  nurse  shook  her  head.  "No — but  it's  awful.  .  . 
this  afternoon.  .  ."  Her  glance  turned  to  the  sick- 
room. - 

"Go  and  rest — I'll  stay  till  bedtime,"  Justine  said. 

"Miss  Safford's  down  with  another  headache." 

"I  know:  it  doesn't  matter.     I'm  quite  fresh." 
[430] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"You  do  look  rested!"  the  other  exclaimed,  her  eyes 
lingering  enviously  on  Justine's  face. 

She  stole  away,  and  Justine  entered  the  room.  It 
was  true  that  she  felt  fresh — a  new  spring  of  hope 
had  welled  up  in  her.  She  had  her  nerves  in  hand 
again,  she  had  regained  her  steady  vision  of  life.  .  . 

But  in  the  room,  as  the  nurse  had  said,  it  was  awful. 
The  time  had  come  when  the  effect  of  the  anaesthetics 
must  be  carefully  husbanded,  when  long  intervals  of 
pain  must  purchase  the  diminishing  moments  of  relief. 
Yet  from  Wyant's  standpoint  it  was  a  good  day — things 
were  looking  well,  as  he  would  have  phrased  it.  And 
each  day  now  was  a  fresh  victory. 

Justine  went  through  her  task  mechanically.  The 
glow  of  strength  and  courage  remained,  steeling  her  to 
bear  what,  had  broken  down  Miss  Mace's  professional 
fortitude.  But  when  she  sat  down  by  the  bed  Bessy's 
moaning  began  to  wear  on  her.  It  was  no  longer  the 
utterance  of  human  pain,  but  the  monotonous  whimper 
of  an  animal — the  kind  of  sound  that  a  compassionate 
hand  would  instinctively  crush  into  silence.  But  her 
hand  had  other  duties;  she  must  keep  watch  on  pulse 
and  heart,  must  reinforce  their  action  with  the  tre- 
mendous stimulants  which  Wyant  was  now  using,  and, 
having  revived  fresh  sensibility  to  pain,  must  presently 
try  to  allay  it  by  the  cautious  use  of  narcotics. 

It  was  all  simple  enough — but  suppose  she  should 
[431  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

not  do  it  ?  Suppose  she  left  the  stimulants  untouched  ? 
Wyant  was  absent,  one  nurse  exhausted  with 
fatigue,  the  other  laid  low  by  headache.  Justine  had 
the  field  to  herself.  For  three  hours  at  least  no  one 
was  likely  to  cross  the  threshold  of  the  sick-room.  .  . 
Ah,  if  no  more  time  were  needed!  But  there  was  too 
much  life  in  Bessy — her  youth  was  fighting  too  hard 
for  her!  She  would  not  sink  out  of  life  in  three  hours. . . 
and  Justine  could  not  count  on  more  than  that. 

She  looked  at  the  little  travelling-clock  on  the  dress- 
ing-table, and  saw  that  its  hands  marked  four.  An 
hour  had  passed  already.  .  .  She  rose  and  adminis- 
tered the  prescribed  restorative;  then  she  took  the  pulse, 
and  listened  to  the  beat  of  the  heart.  Strong  still — too 
strong! 

As  she  lifted  her  head,  the  vague  animal  wailing 
ceased,  and  she  heard  her  name:  "Justine " 

She  bent  down  eagerly.     "Yes?" 

No  answer:  the  wailing  had  begun  again.  But  the 
one  word  showed  her  that  the  mind  still  lived  in  its 
torture-house,  that  the  poor  powerless  body  before  her 
was  not  yet  a  mere  bundle  of  senseless  reflexes,  but  her 
friend  Bessy  Amherst,  dying,  and  feeling  herself  die.  .  . 

Justine  reseated  herself",  and  the  vigil  began  again. 

The  second  hour  ebbed  slowly — ah,  no,  it  was  flying 

now!    Her  eyes  were  on  the  hands  of  the  clock  and 

they  seemed  leagued  against  her  to  devour  the  precious 

[  432  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

minutes.  And  now  she  could  see  by  certain  spasmodic 
symptoms  that  another  crisis  of  pain  was  approaching 
— one  of  the  struggles  that  Wyant,  at  times,  had  almost 
seemed  to  court  and  exult  in. 

Bessy's  eyes  turned  on  her  again.     "Justine " 

She  knew  what  that  meant:  it  was  an  appeal  for  the 
hypodermic  needle.  The  little  instrument  lay  at  hand, 
beside  a  newly-filled  bottle  of  morphia.  But  she  must 
wait — must  let  the  pain  grow  more  severe.  Yet  she 
could  not  turn  her  gaze  from  Bessy,  and  Bessy's  eyes 
entreated  her  again — Justine!  There  was  really  no 
word  now — the  whimperings  were  uninterrupted.  But 
Justine  heard  an  inner  voice,  and  its  pleading  shook  her 
heart.  She  rose  and  filled  the  syringe — and  returning 
with  it,  bent  above  the  bed.  .  . 

She  lifted  her  head  and  looked  at  the  clock.  The  sec- 
ond hour  had  passed.  As  she  looked,  she  heard  a  step 
in  the  sitting-room.  Who  could  it  be  ?  Not  Dr.  Gar- 
ford's  assistant — he  was  not  due  till  seven.  She  lis- 
tened again.  .  .  One  of  the  nurses  ?  No,  not  a 

woman's  step 

The  door  opened,  and  Wyant  came  in.  Justine 
stood  by  the  bed  without  moving  toward  him.  He 
paused  also,  as  if  surprised  to  see  her  there  motionless. 
In  the  intense  silence  she  fancied  for  a  moment  that 
she  heard  Bessy's  violent  agonized  breathing.  She 
[433] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

tried  to  speak,  to  drown  the  sound  of  the  breathing; 
but  her  lips  trembled  too  much,  and  she  remained 
silent. 

Wyant  seemed  to  hear  nothing.  He  stood  so  still 
that  she  felt  she  must  move  forward.  As  she  did  so, 
she  picked  up  from  the  table  by  the  bed  the  memoranda 
that  it  was  her  duty  to  submit  to  him. 

"Well?"  he  said,  in  the  familiar  sick-room  whisper. 

"She  is  dead." 

He  fell  back  a  step,  glaring  at  her,  white  and  in- 
credulous. 

"Dead?—    When ?" 

"A  few  minutes  ago.  .  ." 

"Dead—?    It's  not  possible!" 

He  swept  past  her,  shouldering  her  aside,  pushing  in 
an  electric  button  as  he  sprang  to  the  bed.  She  per- 
ceived then  that  the  room  had  been  almost  in  darkness. 
She  recovered  command  of  herself,  and  followed  him. 
He  was  going  through  the  usual  rapid  examination — 
pulse,  heart,  breath — hanging  over  the  bed  like  some 
angry  animal  balked  of  its  prey.  Then  he  lifted  the 
lids  and  bent  close  above  the  eyes. 

"Take  the  shade  off  that  lamp!"  he  commanded. 

Justine  obeyed  him. 

He  stooped  down  again  to  examine  the  eyes.  .  .  he 
remained  stooping  a  long  time.  Suddenly  he  stood  up 
and  faced  her. 

[  434  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Had  she  been  in  great  pain  ?" 

"Yes." 

"Worse  than  usual?" 

"Yes." 

"What  had  you  done?" 

"Nothing — there  was  no  time." 

"No  time?"  He  broke  off  to  sweep  the  room  again 
with  his  excited  incredulous  glance.  "Where  are  the 
others?  Why  were  you  here  alone?"  he  demanded. 

"It  came  suddenly.     I  was  going  to  call " 

Their  eyes  met  for  a  moment.  Her  face  was  per- 
fectly calm — she  could  feel  that  her  lips  no  longer  trem- 
bled. She  was  not  in  the  least  afraid  of  Wyant's 
scrutiny. 

As  he  continued  to  look  at  her,  his  expression  slowly 
passed  from  incredulous  wrath  to  something  softer — 
more  human — she  could  not  tell  what.  .  . 

"This  has  been  too  much  for  you — go  and  send  one  of 
the  others.  .  .  It's  all  over,"  he  said. 


[  435  ] 


BOOK   IV 
XXX 

ON  a  September  day,  somewhat  more  than  a  year 
and  a  half  after  Bessy  Amherst's  death,  her 
husband  and  his  mother  sat  at  luncheon  in  the  dining- 
room  of  the  Westmore  house  at  Hanaford. 

The  house  was  John  Amherst's  now,  and  shortly 
after  the  loss  of  his  wife  he  had  established  himself 
there  with  his  mother.  By  a  will  made  some  six 
months  before  her  death,  Bessy  had  divided  her 
estate  between  her  husband  and  daughter,  placing 
Cicely's  share  in  trust,  and  appointing  Mr.  Langhope 
and  Amherst  as  her  guardians.  As  the  latter  was  also 
her  trustee,  the  whole  management  of  the  estate  de- 
volved on  him,  while  his  control  of  the  Westmore  mills 
was  ensured  by  his  receiving  a  slightly  larger  propor- 
tion of  the  stock  than  his  step-daughter. 

The  will  had  come  as  a  surprise,  not  only  to 
Amherst  himself,  but  to  his  wife's  family,  anil  more 
especially  to  her  legal  adviser.  Mr.  Tredegar  had  in 
fact  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  drawing  of  the  instru- 
ment; but  as  it  had  been  drawn  in  due  form,  and  by  a 
firm  of  excellent  standing,  he  was  obliged,  in  spite  of  his 
[436] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

private  views,  and  Mr.  Langhope's  open  adjurations 
that  he  should  "do  something,"  to  declare  that  there 
was  no  pretext  for  questioning  the  validity  of  the 
document. 

To  Amherst  the  will  was  something  more  than  a 
proof  of  his  wife's  confidence:  it  came  as  a  reconciling 
word  from  her  grave.  For  the  date  showed  that  it  had 
been  made  at  a  moment  when  he  supposed  himself  to 
have  lost  all  influence  over  her — on  the  morrow  of  the 
day  when  she  had  stipulated  that  he  should  give  up 
the  management  of  the  Westmore  mills,  and  yield  the 
care  of  her  property  to  Mr.  Tredegar. 

While  she  smote  him  with  one  hand,  she  sued  for 
pardon  with  the  other;  and  the  contradiction  was  so 
characteristic,  it  explained  and  excused  in  so  touching 
a  way  the  inconsistencies  of  her  impulsive  heart  and 
hesitating  mind,  that  he  was  filled  with  that  tender 
compunction,  that  searching  sense  of  his  own  short- 
comings, which  generous  natures  feel  when  they  find 
they  have  underrated  the  generosity  of  others.  But 
Amherst's  was  not  an  introspective  mind,  and  his 
sound  moral  sense  told  him,  when  the  first  pang  of 
self-reproach  had  subsided,  that  he  had  done  his  best 
by  his  wife,  and  was  in  no  way  to  blame  if  her  recog- 
nition of  the  fact  had  come  too  late.  The  self-reproach 
subsided;  and,  instead  of  the  bitterness  of  the  past,  it 
left  a  softened  memory  which  made  him  take  up  his 
[  437] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

task  with  the  sense  that  he  was  now  working  with  Bessy 
and  not  against  her. 

Yet  perhaps,  after  all,  it  was  chiefly  the  work  itself 
which  had  healed  old  wounds,  and  quelled  the  ten- 
dency to  vain  regrets.  Amherst  was  only  thirty-four; 
and  in  the  prime  of  his  energies  the  task  he  was  made 
for  had  been  given  back  to  him.  To  a  sound  nature, 
which  finds  its  outlet  in  fruitful  action,  nothing  so  sim- 
plifies the  complexities  of  life,  so  tends  to  a  large  ac- 
ceptance of  its  vicissitudes  and  mysteries,  as  the  sense 
of  doing  something  each  day  toward  clearing  one's  own 
bit  of  the  wilderness.  And  this  was  the  joy  at  last  con- 
ceded to  Amherst.  The  mills  were  virtually  his;  and 
the  fact  that  he  ruled  them  not  only  in  his  own  right  but 
as  Cicely's  representative,  made  him  doubly  eager  to 
justify  his  wife's  trust  in  him. 

Mrs.  Amherst,  looking  up  from  a  telegram  which  the 
parlour-maid  had  handed  her,  smiled  across  the  table 
at  her  son. 

"From  Maria  Ansell — they  are  all  coming  tomor- 
row." 

"Ah — that's  good,"  Amherst  rejoined.  "I  should 
have  been  sorry  if  Cicely  had  not  been  here." 

"Mr.  Langhope  is  coming  too,"  his  mother  con- 
tinued. "I'm  glad  of  that,  John." 

"Yes,"  Amherst  again  assented. 

The  morrow  was  to  be  a  great  day  at  Westmore. 
[438] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

The  Emergency  Hospital,  planned  in  the  first  months 
of  his  marriage,  and  abandoned  in  the  general  reduc- 
tion of  expenditure  at  the  mills,  had  now  been  com- 
pleted on  a  larger  and  more  elaborate  scale,  as  a  me- 
morial to  Bessy.  The  strict  retrenchment  of  all  per- 
sonal expenses,  and  the  leasing  of  Lynbrook  and  the 
town  house,  had  enabled  Amherst,  in  eighteen  months, 
to  lay  by  enough  income  to  carry  out  this  plan,  which 
he  was  impatient  to  see  executed  as  a  visible  com- 
memoration of  his  wife's  generosity  to  Westmore.  For 
Amherst  persisted  in  regarding  the  gift  of  her  fortune 
as  a  gift  not  to  himself  but  to  the  mills:  he  looked  on 
himself  merely  as  the  agent  of  her  beneficent  inten- 
tions. He  was  anxious  that  Westmore  and  Hanaford 
should  take  the  same  view;  and  the  opening  of  the 
Westmore  Memorial  Hospital  was  therefore  to  be  per- 
formed with  an  unwonted  degree  of  ceremony. 

"I  am  glad  Mr.  Langhope  is  coming,"  Mrs.  Am- 
herst repeated,  as  they  rose  from  the  table.  "  It  shows, 
dear — doesn't  it? — that  he's  really  gratified — that  he 
appreciates  your  motive.  .  ." 

She  raised  a  proud  glance  to  her  tall  son,  whose  head 
seemed  to  tower  higher  than  ever  above  her  small  pro- 
portions. Renewed  self-confidence,  and  the  habit  of 
command,  had  in  fact  restored  the  erectness  to  Am- 
herst's  shoulders  and  the  clearness  to  his  eyes.  The 
cleft  between  the  brows  was  gone,  and  his  veiled  in- 
[439] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

ward  gaze  had  given  place  to  a  glance  almost  as  out- 
ward-looking and  unspeculative  as  his  mother's. 

"It  shows — well,  yes — what  you  say!"  he  rejoined 
with  a  slight  laugh,  and  a  tap  on  her  shoulder  as  she 


He  was  under  no  illusions  as  to  his  father-in-law's 
attitude:  he  knew  that  Mr.  Langhope  would  willingly 
have  broken  the  will  which  deprived  his  grand-daughter 
of  half  her  inheritance,  and  that  his  subsequent  show 
of  friendliness  was  merely  a  concession  to  expediency. 
But  in  his  present  mood  Amherst  almost  believed  that 
time  and  closer  relations  might  turn  such  sentiments 
into  honest  liking.  He  was  very  fond  of  his  little  step- 
daughter, and  deeply  sensible  of  his  obligations  toward 
her;  and  he  hoped  that,  as  Mr.  Langhope  came  to 
recognize  this,  it  might  bring  about  a  better  under- 
standing between  them. 

His  mother  detained  him.  "You're  going  back  to 
the  mills  at  once  ?  I  wanted  to  consult  you  about  the 
rooms.  Miss  Brent  had  better  be  next  to  Cicely  ?  " 

"I  suppose  so — yes.  I'll  see  you  before  I  go."  He 
nodded  affectionately  and  passed  on,  his  hands  full  of 
papers,  into  the  Oriental  smoking-room,  now  dedi- 
cated to  the  unexpected  uses  of  an  office  and  study. 

Mrs.  Amherst,  as  she  turned  away,  found  the  parlour- 
maid in  the  act  of  opening  the  front  door  to  the  highly- 
tinted  and  well-dressed  figure  of  Mrs.  Harry  Dressel. 
L 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I'm  so  delighted  to  hear  that  you're  expecting  Jus- 
tine," began  Mrs.  Dressel  as  the  two  ladies  passed  into 
the  drawing-room. 

"Ah,  you've  heard  too?"  Mrs.  Amherst  rejoined, 
enthroning  her  visitor  in  one  of  the  monumental  plush 
armchairs  beneath  the  threatening  weight  of  the  Bay 
of  Naples. 

"I  hadn't  till  this  moment;  in  fact  I  flew  in  to  ask 
for  news,  and  on  the  door-step  there  was  such  a  striking- 
looking  young  man  enquiring  for  her,  and  I  heard  the 
parlour-maid  say  she  was  arriving  tomorrow." 

"A  young  man?  Some  one  you  didn't  know?" 
Striking  apparitions  of  the  male  sex  were  of  infrequent 
occurrence  at  Hanaford,  and  Mrs.  Amherst's  unabated 
interest  in  the  movement  of  life  caused  her  to  dwell  on 
this  statement. 

"Oh,  no — I'm  sure  he  was  a  stranger.  Extremely 
slight  and  pale,  with  remarkable  eyes.  He  was  so 
disappointed — he  seemed  sure  of  finding  her." 

"Well,  no  doubt  he'll  come  back  tomorrow. — You 
know  we're  expecting  the  whole  party,"  added  Mrs. 
Amherst,  to  whom  the  imparting  of  good  news  was 
always  an  irresistible  temptation. 

Mrs.  Dressel's  interest  deepened  at  once.  "Really? 
Mr.  Langhope  too  ?  " 

"Yes.     It's  a  great  pleasure  to  my  son." 

"It  must  be!  I'm  so  glad.  I  suppose  in  a  way  it 
[441  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

will  be  rather  sad  for  Mr.  Langhope — seeing  every- 
thing here  so  unchanged — 

Mrs.  Amherst  straightened  herself  a  little.  "  I  think 
he  will  prefer  to  find  it  so,"  she  said,  with  a  barely 
perceptible  change  of  tone. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.  They  were  never  very  fond  of 
this  house." 

There  was  an  added  note  of  authority  in  Mrs. 
Dressel's  accent.  In  the  last  few  months  she  had  been 
to  Europe  and  had  had  nervous  prostration,  and  these 
incontestable  evidences  of  growing  prosperity  could  not 
always  be  kept  out  of  her  voice  and  bearing.  At  any 
rate,  they  justified  her  in  thinking  that  her  opinion  on 
almost  any  subject  within  the  range  of  human  experi- 
ence was  a  valuable  addition  to  the  sum-total  of  wis- 
dom; and  unabashed  by  the  silence  with  which  her 
comment  was  received,  she  continued  her  critical  survey 
of  the  drawing-room. 

"Dear  Mrs.  Amherst — you  know  I  can't  help 
saying  what  I  think — and  I've  so  often  wondered 
why  you  don't  do  this  room  over.  With  these 
high  ceilings  you  could  do  something  lovely  in  Louis 
Seize." 

A  faint  pink  rose  to  Mrs.  Amherst's  cheeks.  "I 
don't  think  my  son  would  ever  care  to  make  any 
changes  here,"  she  said. 

"Oh,  I  understand  his  feeling;  but  when  he  begins 
[442] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

to  entertain — and  you  know  poor  Bessy  always  hated 
this  furniture." 

Mrs.  Amherst  smiled  slightly.  "Perhaps  if  he  mar- 
ries again — "  she  said,  seizing  at  random  on  a  pretext 
for  changing  the  subject. 

Mrs.  Dressel  dropped  the  hands  with  which  she  was 
absent-mindedly  assuring  herself  of  the  continuance  of 
unbroken  relations  between  her  hat  and  her  hair. 

"Marries  again?  Why — you  don't  mean — ?  He 
doesn't  think  of  it?" 

"Not  in  the  least — I  spoke  figuratively,"  her  hostess 
rejoined  with  a  laugh. 

"Oh,  of  course — I  see.  He  really  couldn't  marry, 
could  he?  I  mean,  it  would  be  so  wrong  to  Cicely — 
under  the  circumstances." 

Mrs.  Amherst's  black  eye-brows  gathered  in  a  slight 
frown.  She  had  already  noticed,  on  the  part  of  the 
Hanaford  clan,  a  disposition  to  regard  Amherst  as 
imprisoned  in  the  conditions  of  his  trust,  and  com- 
mitted to  the  obligation  of  handing  on  unimpaired  to 
Cicely  the  fortune  his  wife's  caprice  had  bestowed  on 
him;  and  this  open  expression  of  the  family  view  was 
singularly  displeasing  to  her. 

"I  had  not  thought  of  it  in  that  light — but  it's  really 
of  no  consequence  how  one  looks  at  a  thing  that  is  not 
going  to  happen,"  she  said  carelessly. 

"No — naturally;  I  see  you  were  only  joking.  He's 
[  443  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

so  devoted  to  Cicely,  isn't  he?"  Mrs.  Dressel  rejoined, 
with  her  bright  obtuseness. 

A  step  on  the  threshold  announced  Amherst's  ap- 
proach. 

"I'm  afraid  I  must  be  off,  mother — "  he  began,  halt- 
ing in  the  doorway  with  the  instinctive  masculine  recoil 
from  the  afternoon  caller. 

"Oh,  Mr.  Amherst,  how  d'you  do  ?  I  suppose  you're 
very  busy  about  tomorrow  ?  I  just  flew  in  to  find  out 
if  Justine  was  really  coming,"  Mrs.  Dressel  explained, 
a  little  fluttered  by  the  effort  of  recalling  what  she  had 
been  saying  when  he  entered. 

"I  believe  my  mother  expects  the  whole  party,"  Am- 
herst replied,  shaking  hands  with  the  false  bonhomie  of 
the  man  entrapped. 

"How  delightful!  And  it's  so  nice  to  think  that  Mr. 
Langhope's  arrangement  with  Justine  still  works  so 
well,"  Mrs.  Dressel  hastened  on,  nervously  hoping  that 
her  volubility  would  smother  any  recollection  of  what 
he  had  chanced  to  overhear. 

"Mr.  Langhope  is  lucky  in  having  persuaded  Miss 
Brent  to  take  charge  of  Cicely,"  Mrs.  Amherst  quietly 
interposed. 

"Yes — and  it  was  so  lucky  for  Justine  too!  When 
she  came  back  from  Europe  with  us  last  autumn,  I 
could  see  she  simply  hated  the  idea  of  taking  up  her 
nursing  again." 

[  444  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Amherst's  face  darkened  at  the  allusion,  and  his 
mother  said  hurriedly:  "Ah,  she  was  tired,  poor  child; 
but  I'm  only  afraid  that,  after  the  summer's  rest,  she 
may  want  some  more  active  occupation  than  looking 
after  a  little  girl." 

"Oh,  I  think  not — she's  so  fond  of  Cicely.  And  of 
course  it's  everything  to  her  to  have  a  comfortable 
home." 

Mrs.  Amherst  smiled.  "At  her  age,  it's  not  always 
everything." 

Mrs.  Dressel  stared  slightly.  "Oh,  Justine's  twenty- 
seven,  you  know;  she's  not  likely  to  marry  now,"  she 
said,  with  the  mild  finality  of  the  early-wedded. 

She  rose  as  she  spoke,  extending  cordial  hands  of 
farewell.  "You  must  be  so  busy  preparing  for  the 
great  day.  .  .  if  only  it  doesn't  rain!  .  .  No,  please, 
Mr.  Amherst!  .  .  It's  a  mere  step — I'm  walking.  .  ." 

That  afternoon,  as  Amherst  walked  out  toward  West- 
more  for  a  survey  of  the  final  preparations,  he  found 
that,  among  the  pleasant  thoughts  accompanying  him, 
one  of  the  pleasantest  was  the  anticipation  of  seeing 
Justine  Brent. 

Among  the  little  group  who  were  to  surround  him  on 
the  morrow,  she  was  the  only  one  discerning  enough  to 
understand  what  the  day  meant  to  him,  or  with  suffi- 
cient knowledge  to  judge  of  the  use  he  had  made  of 
[  445  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

his  great  opportunity.  Even  now  that  the  opportunity 
had  come,  and  all  obstacles  were  levelled,  sympathy 
with  his  work  was  as  much  lacking  as  ever;  and  only 
Duplain,  at  length  reinstated  as  manager,  really  under- 
stood and  shared  in  his  aims.  But  Justine  Brent's 
sympathy  was  of  a  different  kind  from  the  manager's. 
If  less  logical,  it  was  warmer,  more  penetrating — like 
some  fine  imponderable  fluid,  so  subtle  that  it  could 
always  find  a  way  through  the  clumsy  processes  of 
human  intercourse.  Amherst  had  thought  very  often 
of  this  quality  in  her  during  the  weeks  which  fol- 
lowed his  abrupt  departure  for  Georgia;  and  in  trying 
to  define  it  he  had  said  to  himself  that  she  felt  with  her 

brain. 

/ 

And  now,  aside  from  the  instinctive  understanding 
between  them,  she  was  set  apart  in  his  thoughts  by  her 
association  with  his  wife's  last  days.  On  his  arrival 
from  the  south  he  had  gathered  on  all  sides  evidences 
of  her  tender  devotion  to  Bessy:  even  Mr.  Tredegar's 
chary  praise  swelled  the  general  commendation.  From 
the  surgeons  he  heard  how  her  unwearied  skill  had 
helped  them  in  their  fruitless  efforts;  poor  Cicely, 
awed  by  her  loss,  clung  to  her  mother's  friend  with 
childish  tenacity;  and  the  young  rector  of  Saint  Anne's, 
shyly  acquitting  himself  of  his  visit  of  condolence, 
dwelt  chiefly  on  the  consolatory  thought  of  Miss 
Brent's  presence  at  the  death-bed. 
[  446  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

The  knowledge  that  Justine  had  been  with  his  wife 
till  the  end  had,  in  fact,  done  more  than  anything  else 
to  soften  Amherst's  regrets;  and  he  had  tried  to  ex- 
press something  of  this  in  the  course  of  his  first  talk 
with  her.  Justine  had  given  him  a  clear  and  self- 
possessed  report  of  the  dreadful  weeks  at  Lynbrook; 
but  at  his  first  allusion  to  her  own  part  in  them,  she 
shrank  into  a  state  of  distress  which  seemed  to  plead 
with  him  to  refrain  from  even  the  tenderest  touch  on 
her  feelings.  It  was  a  peculiarity  of  their  friendship 
that  silence  and  absence  had  always  mysteriously  fos- 
tered its  growth;  and  he  now  felt  that  her  reticence 
deepened  the  understanding  between  them  as  the  freest 
confidences  might  not  have  done. 

Soon  afterward,  an  opportune  attack  of  nervous  pros- 
tration had  sent  Mrs.  Harry  Dressel  abroad;  and  Jus- 
tine was  selected  as  her  companion.  They  remained 
in  Europe  for  six  months;  and  on  their  return  Amherst 
learned  with  pleasure  that  Mr.  Langhope  had  asked 
Miss  Brent  to  take  charge  of  Cicely. 

Mr.  Langhope's  sorrow  for  his  daughter  had  been 
aggravated  by  futile  wrath  at  her  unaccountable  will; 
and  the  mixed  sentiment  thus  engendered  had  found 
expression  in  a  jealous  outpouring  of  affection  toward 
Cicely.  He  took  immediate  possession  of  the  child, 
and  in  the  first  stages  of  his  affliction  her  companion- 
ship had  been  really  consoling.  But  as  time  passed, 
[447] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

and  the  pleasant  habits  of  years  reasserted  them- 
selves, her  presence  became,  in  small  unacknowledged 
ways,  a  source  of  domestic  irritation.  Nursery  hours 
disturbed  the  easy  routine  of  his  household ;  the  elderly 
parlour-maid  who  had  long  ruled  it  resented  the  inter- 
vention of  Cicely's  nurse;  the  little  governess,  involved 
in  the  dispute,  broke  down  and  had  to  be  shipped  home 
to  Germany;  a  successor  was  hard  to  find,  and  in  the 
interval  Mr.  Langhope's  privacy  was  invaded  by  a 
stream  of  visiting  teachers,  who  were  always  wanting 
to  consult  him  about  Cicely's  lessons,  and  lay  before 
him  their  tiresome  complaints  and  perplexities.  Poor 
Mr.  Langhope  found  himself  in  the  position  of  the 
mourner  who,  in  the  first  fervour  of  bereavement,  has 
undertaken  the  construction  of  an  imposing  monument 
without  having  counted  the  cost.  He  had  meant  that 
his  devotion  to  Cicely  should  be  a  monument  to  his 
paternal  grief;  but  the  foundations  were  scarcely  laid 
when  he  found  that  the  funds  of  time  and  patience 
were  almost  exhausted. 

Pride  forbade  his  consigning  Cicely  to  her  step- 
father, though  Mrs.  Amherst  would  gladly  have  under- 
taken her  care;  Mrs.  Ansell's  migratory  habits  made  it 
impossible  for  her  to  do  more  than  intermittently  hover 
and  advise;  and  a  new  hope  rose  before  Mr.  Lang- 
hope  when  it  occurred  to  him  to  appeal  to  Miss  Brent. 

The  experiment  had  proved  a  success,  and  when 
[448] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Amherst  met  Justine  again  she  had  been  for  some 
months  in  charge  of  the  little  girl,  and  change  and  con- 
genial occupation  had  restored  her  to  a  normal  view 
of  life.  There  was  no  trace  in  her  now  of  the  dumb 
misery  which  had  haunted  him  at  their  parting;  she 
was  again  the  vivid  creature  who  seemed  more  charged 
with  life  than  any  one  he  had  ever  known.  The  crisis 
through  which  she  had  passed  showed  itself  only  in  a 
smoothing  of  the  brow  and  deepening  of  the  eyes,  as 
though  a  bloom  of  experience  had  veiled  without  dead- 
ening the  first  brilliancy  of  youth. 

As  he  lingered  on  the  image  thus  evoked,  he  recalled 
Mrs.  Dressel's  words r  "Justine  is  twenty-seven — she's 
not  likely  to  marry  now." 

Oddly  enough,  he  had  never  thought  of  her  marry- 
ing— but  now  that  he  heard  the  possibility  questioned, 
he  felt  a  disagreeable  conviction  of  its  inevitableness. 
Mrs.  Dressel's  view  was  of  course  absurd.  In  spite  of 
Justine's  feminine  graces,  he  had  formerly  felt  in  her  a 
kind  of  elfin  immaturity,  as  of  a  flitting  Ariel  with  un- 
touched heart  and  senses:  it  was  only  of  late  that  she 
had  developed  the  subtle  quality  which  calls  up  thoughts 
of  love.  Not  marry  ?  Why,  the  vagrant  fire  had  just 
lighted  on  her — and  the  fact  that  she  was  poor  and  un- 
attached, with  her  own  way  to  make,  and  no  setting 
of  pleasure  and  elegance  to  embellish  her — these  dis- 
advantages seemed  as  nothing  to  Amherst  against  the 
[  449  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

warmth  of  personality  in  which  she  moved.  And  be- 
sides, she  would  never  be  drawn  to  the  kind  of  man 
who  needed  fine  clothes  and  luxury  to  point  him  to 
the  charm  of  sex.  She  was  always  finished  and  grace- 
ful in  appearance,  with  the  pretty  woman's  art  of  wear- 
ing her  few  plain  dresses  as  if  they  were  many  and 
varied;  yet  no  one  could  think  of  her  as  attaching  much 
importance  to  the  upholstery  of  life.  .  .  No,  the  man 
who  won  her  would  be  of  a  different  type,  have  other 
inducements  to  offer.  .  .  and  Amherst  found  himself 
wondering  just  what  those  inducements  would  be. 

Suddenly  he  remembered  something  his  mother  had 
said  as  he  left  the  house — something  about  a  distin- 
guished-looking young  man  who  had  called  to  ask 
for  Miss  Brent.  Mrs.  Amherst,  innocently  inquisitive 
in  small  matters,  had  followed  her  son  into  the  hall  to 
ask  the  parlour-maid  if  the  gentleman  had  left  his 
name;  and  the  parlour-maid  had  answered  in  the  nega- 
tive. The  young  man  was  evidently  not  indigenous: 
all  the  social  units  of  Hanaford  were  intimately  known 
to  each  other.  He  was  a  stranger,  therefore,  presuma- 
bly drawn  there  by  the  hope  of  seeing  Miss  Brent. 
But  if  he  knew  that  she  was  coming  he  must  be  in- 
timately acquainted  with  her  movements.  .  .  The 
thought  came  to  Amherst  as  an  unpleasant  surprise. 
It  showed  him  for  the  first  time  how  little  he  knew  of 
Justine's  personal  life,  of  the  ties  she  might  have  formed 
[  450  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

outside  the  Lynbrook  circle.  After  all,  he  had  seen 
her  chiefly  not  among  her  own  friends  but  among  his 
wife's.  Was  it  reasonable  to  suppose  that  a  creature 
of  her  keen  individuality  would  be  content  to  subsist 
on  the  fringe  of  other  existences?  Somewhere,  of 
course,  she  must  have  a  centre  of  her  own,  must  be 
subject  to  influences  of  which  he  was  wholly  ignorant. 
And  since  her  departure  from  Lynbrook  he  had  known 
even  less  of  her  life.  She  had  spent  the  previous  win- 
ter with  Mr.  Langhope  in  New  York,  where  Amherst 
had  seen  her  only  on  his  rare  visits  to  Cicely;  and  Mr. 
Langhope,  on  going  abroad  for  the  summer,  had  es- 
tablished his  grand-daughter  in  a  Bar  Harbour  cot- 
tage, where,  save  for  two  flying  visits  from  Mrs. 
Ansell,  Miss  Brent  had  reigned  alone  till  his  return  in 
September. 

Very  likely,  Amherst  reflected,  the  mysterious  visitor 
was  a  Bar  Harbour  acquaintance — no,  more  than  an 
acquaintance:  a  friend.  And  as  Mr.  Langhope's  party 
had  left  Mount  Desert  but  three  days  previously,  the 
arrival  of  the  unknown  at  Hanaford  showed  a  sin- 
gular impatience  to  rejoin  Miss  Brent. 

As  he  reached  this  point  in  his  meditations,  Amherst 
found  himself  at  the  .street-corner  where  it  was  his 
habit  to  pick  up  the  Westmore  trolley.  Just  as  it  bore 
down  on  him,  and  he  sprang  to  the  platform,  another 
car,  coming  in  from  the  mills,  stopped  to  discharge  its 
[451  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

passengers.  Among  them  Amherst  noticed  a  slender 
undersized  man  in  shabby  clothes,  about  whose  retreat- 
ing back,  as  he  crossed  the  street  to  signal  a  Station 
Avenue  car,  there  was  something  dimly  familiar,  and 
suggestive  of  troubled  memories.  Amherst  leaned  out 
and  looked  again:  yes,  the  back  was  certainly  like  Dr. 
Wyant's — but  what  could  Wyant  be  doing  at  Hana- 
ford,  and  in  a  Westmore  car  ? 

Amherst's  first  impulse  was  to  spring  out  and  over- 
take him.  He  knew  how  admirably  the  young  physi- 
cian had  borne  himself  at  Lynbrook;  he  even  re- 
called Dr.  Garford's  saying,  with  his  kindly  sceptical 
smile:  "Poor  Wyant  believed  to  the  end  that  we  could 
save  her" — and  felt  again  his  own  inward  movement  of 
thankfulness  that  the  cruel  miracle  had  not  been  worked. 

He  owed  a  great  deal  to  Wyant,  and  had  tried  to 
express  his  sense  of  the  fact  by  warm  words  and  a 
liberal  fee;  but  since  Bessy's  death  he  had  never  re- 
turned to  Lynbrook,  and  had  consequently  lost  sight 
of  the  young  doctor. 

Now  he  felt  that  he  ought  to  try  to  rejoin  him,  to 
find  out  why  he  was  at  Hanaford,  and  make  some 
proffer  of  hospitality;  but  if  the  stranger  were  really 
Wyant,  his  choice  of  the  Station  Avenue  car  made  it 
appear  that  he  was  on  his  way  to  catch  the  New 
York  express;  and  in  any  case  Amherst's  engagements 
at  Westmore  made  immediate  pursuit  impossible. 
[  452  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

He  consoled  himself  with  the  thought  that  if  the  phy- 
sician was  not  leaving  Hanaford  he  would  be  certain 
to  call  at  the  house;  and  then  his  mind  flew  back  to 
Justine  Brent.  But  the  pleasure  of  looking  forward 
to  her  arrival  was  disturbed  by  new  feelings.  A  sense 
of  reserve  and  embarrassment  had  sprung  up  in  his 
mind,  checking  that  free  mental  communion  which,  as 
he  now  perceived,  had  been  one  of  the  unconscious 
promoters  of  their  friendship.  It  was  as  though  his 
thoughts  faced  a  stranger  instead  of  the  familiar  pres- 
ence which  had  so  long  dwelt  in  them;  and  he  began 
to  see  that  the  feeling  of  intelligence  existing  between 
Justine  and  himself  was  not  the  result  of  actual  inti- 
macy, but  merely  of  the  charm  she  knew  how  to  throw 
over  casual  intercourse. 

When  he  had  left  his  house,  his  mind  was  like  a  sum- 
mer sky,  all  open  blue  and  sunlit  rolling  clouds;  but 
gradually  the  clouds  had  darkened  and  massed  them- 
selves, till  they  drew  an  impenetrable  veil  over  the 
upper  light  and  stretched  threateningly  across  his 
whole  horizon. 

XXXI 

f"T\HE  celebrations  at  Westmore  were  over.     Hana- 

A      ford  society,  mustering  for  the  event,  had  streamed 

through  the  hospital,  inspected  the  clinic,  complimented 

Amherst,   recalled   itself   to  Mr.  Langhope  and  Mrs. 

[453] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Ansell,  and  streamed  out  again  to  regain  its  car- 
riages and  motors. 

The  chief  actors  in  the  ceremony  were  also  taking 
leave.  Mr.  Langhope,  somewhat  pale  and  nervous 
after  the  ordeal,  had  been  helped  into  the  Gaines 
landau  with  Mrs.  Ansell  and  Cicely;  Mrs.  Amherst 
had  accepted  a  seat  in  the  Dressel  victoria;  and 
Westy  Gaines,  with  an  empressement  slightly  tinged  by 
condescension,  was  in  the  act  of  placing  his  electric 
phaeton  at  Miss  Brent's  disposal. 

She  stood  in  the  pretty  white  porch  of  the  hospital, 
looking  out  across  its  squares  of  flower-edged  turf  at 
the  long  street  of  Westmore.  In  the  warm  gold- 
powdered  light  of  September  the  factory  town  still 
seemed  a  blot  on  the  face  of  nature;  yet  here  and 
there,  on  all  sides,  Justine's  eye  saw  signs  of  humaniz- 
ing change.  The  rough  banks  along  the  street  had 
been  levelled  and  sodded;  young  maples,  set  in  rows, 
already  made  a  long  festoon  of  gold  against  the  dingy 
house-fronts;  and  the  houses  themselves — once  so 
irreclaimably  outlawed  and  degraded — showed,  in  their 
white-curtained  windows,  their  flowery  white-railed 
yards,  a  growing  approach  to  civilized  human  dwell- 
ings. 

Glancing  the  other  way,  one  still  met  the  grim  pile 
of  factories  cutting  the  sky  with  their  harsh  roof -lines 
and  blackened  chimneys;  but  here  also  were  signs  of 
[  454  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

improvement.  One  of  the  mills  had  already  been  en- 
larged, another  was  scaffolded  for  the  same  purpose, 
and  young  trees  and  neatly-fenced  turf  replaced  the 
surrounding  desert  of  trampled  earth. 

As  Amherst  came  out  of  the  hospital,  he  heard  Miss 
Brent  declining  a  seat  in  Westy's  phaeton. 

"Thank  you  so  much;  but  there's  some  one  here  I 
want  to  see  first — one  of  the  operatives — and  I  can 
easily  take  a  Hanaford  car."  She  held  out  her  hand 
with  the  smile  that  ran  like  colour  over  her  whole  face; 
and  Westy,  nettled  by  this  unaccountable  disregard  of 
her  privileges,  mounted  his  chariot  alone. 

As  he  glided  mournfully  away,  Amherst  turned  to 
Justine.  "You  wanted  to  see  the  Dillons?"  he  asked. 

Their  eyes  met,  and  she  smiled  again.  He  had  never 
seen  her  so  sunned-over,  so  luminous,  since  the  distant 
November  day  when  they  had  picnicked  with  Cicely 
beside  the  swamp.  He  wondered  vaguely  if  she  were 
more  elaborately  dressed  than  usual,  or  if  the  festal 
impression  she  produced  were  simply  a  reflection  of 
her  mood. 

"I  do  want  to  see  the  Dillons — how  did  you 
guess?"  she  rejoined;  and  Amherst  felt  a  sudden  im- 
pulse to  reply:  "For  the  same  reason  that  made  you 
think  of  them." 

The  fact  of  her  remembering  the  Dillons  made 
him  absurdly  happy;  it  re-established  between  them 
[  455  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

the  mental  communion  that  had  been  checked  by  his 
thoughts  of  the  previous  day. 

"I  suppose  I'm  rather  self-conscious  about  the  Dillons, 
because  they're  one  of  my  object  lessons — they  illustrate 
the  text,"  he  said  laughing,  as  they  went  down  the  steps. 

Westmore  had  been  given  a  half -holiday  for  the 
opening  of  the  hospital,  and  as  Amherst  and  Justine 
turned  into  the  street,  parties  of  workers  were  dis- 
persing toward  their  houses.  They  were  still  a  dull- 
eyed  stunted  throng,  to  whom  air  and  movement  seemed 
to  have  been  too  long  denied;  but  there  was  more  ani- 
mation in  the  groups,  more  light  in  individual  faces; 
many  of  the  younger  men  returned  Amherst 's  good-day 
with  a  look  of  friendliness,  and  the  women  to  whom  he 
spoke  met  him  with  a  volubility  that  showed  the  habit 
of  frequent  intercourse. 

"How  much  you  have  done!"  Justine  exclaimed,  as 
he  rejoined  her  after  one  of  these  asides;  but  the  next 
moment  he  saw  a  shade  of  embarrassment  cross  her 
face,  as  though  she  feared  to  have  suggested  com- 
parisons she  had  meant  to  avoid. 

He  answered  quite  naturally:  "Yes — I'm  beginning 
to  see  my  way  now;  and  it's  wonderful  how  they  re- 
spond—"  and  they  walked  on  without  a  shadow  of 
constraint  between  them,  while  he  described  to  her 
what  was  already  done,  and  what  direction  his  pro- 
jected experiments  were  taking. 
[  456  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

The  Dillons  had  been  placed  in  charge  of  one  of  the 
old  factory  tenements,  now  transformed  into  a  lodging- 
house  for  unmarried  operatives.  Even  its  harsh  brick 
exterior,  hung  with  creepers  and  brightened  by  flower- 
borders,  had  taken  on  a  friendly  air;  and  indoors  it  had 
a  clean  sunny  kitchen,  a  big  dining-room  with  cheerful- 
coloured  walls,  and  a  room  where  the  men  could  lounge 
and  smoke  about  a  table  covered  with  papers. 

The  creation  of  these  model  lodging-houses  had 
always  been  a  favourite  scheme  of  Amherst's,  and  the 
Dillons,  incapacitated  for  factory  work,  had  shown 
themselves  admirably  adapted  to  their  new  duties.  In 
Mrs.  Dillon's  small  hot  sitting-room,  among  the  starched 
sofa-tidies  and  pink  shells  that  testified  to  the  family 
prosperity,  Justine  shone  with  enjoyment  and  sym- 
pathy. She  had  always  taken  an  interest  in  the  lives 
and  thoughts  of  working-people:  not  so  much  the 
constructive  interest  of  the  sociological  mind  as  the 
vivid  imaginative  concern  of  a  heart  open  to  every 
human  appeal.  She  liked  to  hear  about  their  hard 
struggles  and  small  pathetic  successes:  the  children's 
sicknesses,  the  father's  lucky  job,  the  little  sum  they 
had  been  able  to  put  by,  the  plans  they  had  formed  for 
Tommy's  advancement,  and  how  Sue's  good  marks  at 
school  were  still  ahead  of  Mrs.  Hagan's  Mary's. 

"What  I  really  like  is  to  gossip  with  them,  and  give 
them  advice  about  the  baby's  cough,  and  the  cheapest 
[  457  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

way  to  do  their  marketing,"  she  said  laughing,  as  she 
and  Amherst  emerged  once  more  into  the  street.  "It's 
the  same  kind  of  interest  I  used  to  feel  in  my  dolls  and 
guinea  pigs — a  managing,  interfering  old  maid's  in- 
terest. I  don't  believe  I  should  care  a  straw  for  them 
if  I  couldn't  dose  them  and  order  them  about." 

Amherst  laughed  too:  he  recalled  the  time  when  he 
had  dreamed  that  just  such  warm  personal  sympathy 
was  her  sex's  destined  contribution  to  the  broad  work 
of  human  beneficence.  Well,  it  had  not  been  a  dream : 
here  was  a  woman  whose  deeds  spoke  for  her.  And 
suddenly  the  thought  came  to  him:  what  might  they 
not  do  at  Westmore  together!  The  brightness  of  it 
was  blinding — like  the  dazzle  of  sunlight  which  faced 
them  as  they  walked  toward  the  mills.  But  it  left  him 
speechless,  confused — glad  to  have  a  pretext  for  routing 
Duplain  out  of  the  office,  introducing  him  to  Miss 
Brent,  and  asking  him  for  the  keys  of  the  buildings.  .  . 

It  was  wonderful,  again,  how  she  grasped  what  he 
was  doing  in  the  mills,  and  saw  how  his  whole  scheme 
hung  together,  harmonizing  the  work  and  leisure  of  the 
operatives,  instead  of  treating  them  as  half  machine, 
half  man,  and  neglecting  the  man  for  the  machine. 
Nor  was  she  content  with  Utopian  generalities:  she 
wanted  to  know  the  how  and  why  of  each  case,  to  hear 
what  conclusions  he  drew  from  his  results,  to  what 
solutions  his  experiments  pointed. 
[  458] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

In  explaining  the  mill  work  he  forgot  his  constraint 
and  returned  to  the  free  comradery  of  mind  that  had 
always  marked  their  relation.  He  turned  the  key  re- 
luctantly in  the  last  door,  and  paused  a  moment  on  the 
threshold. 

"Anything  more?"  he  said,  with  a  laugh  meant  to 
hide  his  desire  to  prolong  their  tour. 

She  glanced  up  at  the  sun,  which  still  swung  free  of 
the  tall  factory  roofs. 

"As  much  as  you've  time  for.  Cicely  doesn't  need 
me  this  afternoon,  and  I  can't  tell  when  I  shall  see 
Westmore  again." 

Her  words  fell  on  him  with  a  chill.  His  smile  faded, 
and  he  looked  away  for  a  moment. 

"But  I  hope  Cicely  will  be  here  often,"  he  said. 

"Oh,  I  hope  so  too,"  she  rejoined,  with  seeming  un- 
consciousness of  any  connection  between  the  wish  and 
her  previous  words. 

Amherst  hesitated.  He  had  meant  to  propose  a  visit 
to  the  old  Eldorado  building,  which  now  at  last  housed 
the  long-desired  night-schools  and  nursery;  but  since 
she  had  spoken  he  felt  a  sudden  indifference  to  show- 
ing her  anything  more.  What  was  the  use,  if  she 
meant  to  leave  Cicely,  and  drift  out  of  his  reach  ?  He 
could  get  on  well  enough  without  sympathy  and  com- 
prehension, but  his  momentary  indulgence  in  them 
made  the  ordinary  taste  of  life  a  little  flat. 
[  459  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"There  must  be  more  to  see  ?"  she  continued,  as  they 
turned  back  toward  the  village;  and  he  answered  ab- 
sently: "Oh,  yes — if  you  like." 

He  heard  the  change  in  his  own  voice,  and  knew  by 
her  quick  side-glance  that  she  had  heard  it  too. 

"Please  let  me  see  everything  that  is  compatible  with 
my  getting  a  car  to  Hanaford  by  six." 

"Well,  then — the  night-school  next,"  he  said  with  an 
effort  at  lightness;  and  to  shake  off  the  importunity  of 
his  own  thoughts  he  added  carelessly,  as  they  walked 
on:  "By  the  way — it  seems  improbable — but  I  think  I 
saw  Dr.  Wyant  yesterday  in  a  Westmore  car." 

She  echoed  the  name  in  surprise.  "Dr.  Wyant? 
Really!  Are  you  sure.?" 

"Not  quite;  but  if  it  wasn't  he  it  was  his  ghost. 
You  haven't  heard  of  his  being  at  Hanaford  ?" 

"No.     I've  heard  nothing  of  him  for  ages." 

Something  in  her  tone  made  him  return  her  side- 
glance;  but  her  voice,  on  closer  analysis,  denoted  only 
indifference,  and  her  profile  seemed  to  express  the  same 
negative  sentiment.  He  remembered  a  vague  Lyn- 
brook  rumour  to  the  effect  that  the  young  doctor  had 
been  attracted  to  Miss  Brent.  Such  floating  seeds 
of  gossip  seldom  rooted  themselves  in  his  mind,  but 
now  the  fact  acquired  a  new  significance,  and  he  won- 
dered how  he  could  have  thought  so  little  of  it  at  the 
time.  Probably  her  somewhat  exaggerated  air  of  in- 
[  460  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

difference  simply  meant  that  she  had  been  bored  by 
Wyant's  attentions,  and  that  the  reminder  of  them 
still  roused  a  slight  self -consciousness. 

Amherst  was  relieved  by  this  conclusion,  and  mur- 
muring: "Oh,  I  suppose  it  can't  have  been  he,"  led 
her  rapidly  on  to  the  Eldorado.  But  the  old  sense  of 
free  communion  was  again  obstructed,  and  her  interest 
in  the  details  of  the  schools  and  nursery  now  seemed 
to  him  only  a  part  of  her  wonderful  art  of  absorbing 
herself  in  other  people's  affairs.  He  was  a  fool  to  have 
been  duped  by  it — to  have  fancied  it  was  anything 
more  personal  than  a  grace  of  manner. 

As  she  turned  away  from  inspecting  the  blackboards 
in  one  of  the  empty  school-rooms  he  paused  before  her 
and  said  suddenly:  "You  spoke  of  not  seeing  West- 
more  again.  Are  you  thinking  of  leaving  Cicely?" 

The  words  were  almost  the  opposite  of  those  he  had 
intended  to  speak;  it  was  as  if  some  irrepressible  inner 
conviction  flung  defiance  at  his  surface  distrust  of  her. 

She  stood  still  also,  and  he  saw  a  thought  move 
across  her  face.  "  Not  immediately — but  perhaps  when 
Mr.  Langhope  can  make  some  other  arrangement " 

Owing  to  the  half-holiday  they  had  the  school- 
building  to  themselves,  and  the  fact  of  being  alone 
with  her,  without  fear  of  interruption,  woke  in  Am- 
herst an  uncontrollable  longing  to  taste ,  for  once  the 
joy  of  unguarded  utterance. 

[  461  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Why  do  you  go?"  he  asked,  moving  close  to  the 
platform  on  which  she  stood. 

She  hesitated,  resting  her  hand  on  the  teacher's  desk. 
Her  eyes  were  kind,  but  he  thought  her  tone  was  cold. 

"This  easy  life  is  rather  out  of  my  line,"  she  said  at 
length,  with  a  smile  that  draped  her  words  in  vague- 
ness. 

Amherst  looked  at  her  again — she  seemed  to  be 
growing  remote  and  inaccessible.  "You  mean  that  you 
don't  want  to  stay?" 

His  tone  was  so  abrupt  that  it  called  forth  one  of 
her  rare  blushes.  "No — not  that.  I  have  been  very 
happy  with  Cicely — but  soon  I  shall  have  to  be  doing 
something  else." 

Why  was  she  blushing?  And  what  did  her  last 
phrase  mean?  "Something  else — ?"  The  blood 
hummed  in  his  ears — he  began  to  hope  she  would 
not  answer  too  quickly. 

She  had  sunk  into  the  seat  behind  the  desk,  propping 
her  elbows  on  its  lid,  and  letting  her  interlaced  hands 
support  her  chin.  A  little  bunch  of  violets  which  had 
been  thrust  into  the  folds  of  her  dress  detached  itself 
and  fell  to  the  floor. 

"What  I  mean  is,"  she  said  in  a  low  voice,  raising 

her  eyes  to  Amherst's,  "that  I've  had  a  great  desire 

lately  to  get  back  to  real  work — my  special  work.  .  . 

I've  been  too  idle  for  the  last  year — I  want  to  do  some 

[  462  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

hard  nursing;   I  want  to  help  people  who  are  miser- 
able." 

She  spoke  earnestly,  almost  passionately,  and  as  he 
listened  his  undefined  fear  was  lifted.  He  had  never 
before  seen  her  in  this  mood,  with  brooding  brows,  and 
the  darkness  of  the  world's  pain  in  her  eyes.  All  her 
glow  had  faded — she  was  a  dun  thrush-like  creature, 
clothed  in  semi-tints;  yet  she  seemed  much  nearer 
than  when  her  smile  shot  light  on  him. 

He  stood  motionless,  his  eyes  absently  fixed  on  the 
bunch  of  violets  at  her  feet.  Suddenly  he  raised  his 
head,  and  broke  out  with  a  boyish  blush:  "Could  it 
have  been  Wyant  who  was  trying  to  see  you?" 

"Dr.  Wyant — trying  to  see  me?"  She  lowered  her 
hands  to  the  desk,  and  sat  looking  at  him  with  open 
wonder. 

He  saw  the  irrelevance  of  his  question,  and  burst, 
in  spite  of  himself,  into  youthful  laughter. 

"I  mean —  It's  only  that  an  unknown  visitor  called 
at  the  house  yesterday,  and  insisted  that  you  must  have 
arrived.  He  seemed  so  annoyed  at  not  finding  you, 
that  I  thought.  .  .  I  imagined.  .  .  it  must  be  some  one 
who  knew  you  very  well.  .  .  and  who  had  followed  you 
here.  .  .  for  some  special  reason.  .  ." 

Her  colour  rose  again,  as  if  caught  from  his;  but 
her  eyes  still  declared  her  ignorance,  "f-ome  special 

reason ?  " 

[  463  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"And  just  now,"  he  blurted  out,  "when  you  said  you 
might  not  stay  much  longer  with  Cicely — I  thought  of 
the  visit — and  wondered  if  there  was  some  one  you 
meant  to  marry.  .  ." 

A  silence  fell  between  them.  Justine  rose  slowly,  her 
eyes  screened  under  the  veil  she  had  lowered.  "No — 
I  don't  mean  to  marry,"  she  said,  half-smiling,  as  she 
came  down  from  the  platform. 

Restored  to  his  level,  her  small  shadowy  head  just  in 
a  line  with  his  eyes,  she  seemed  closer,  more  approach- 
able and  feminine — yet  Amherst  did  not  dare  to  speak. 

She  took  a  few  steps  toward  the  window,  looking  out 
into  the  deserted  street.  "It's  growing  dark — I  must 
go  home,"  she  said. 

"Yes,"  he  assented  absently  as  he  followed  her.  He 
had  no  idea  what  she  was  saying.  The  inner  voices 
in  which  they  habitually  spoke  were  growing  louder 
than  outward  words.  Or  was  it  only  the  voice  of  his 
own  desires  that  he  heard — the  cry  of  new  hopes  and 
unguessed  capacities  of  living?  All  within  him  was 
flood-tide:  this  was  the  top  of  life,  surely — to  feel  her 
alike  in  his  brain  and  his  pulses,  to  steep  sight  and 
hearing  in  the  joy  of  her  nearness,  while  all  the  while 
thought  spoke  clear:  "This  is  the  mate  of  my  mind." 

He  began  again  abruptly.  "Wouldn't  you  marry, 
if  it  gave  you  the  chance  to  do  what  you  say — if  it 
offered  you  hard  work,  and  the  opportunity  to  make 
[  464  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

things    better.  .  .  for  a  great  many  people.  .  .  as   no 
one  but  yourself  could  do  it  ? " 

It  was  a  strange  way  of  putting  his  case:  he  was 
aware  of  it  before  he  ended.  But  it  had  not  occurred 
to  him  to  tell  her  that  she  was  lovely  and  desirable — 
in  his  humility  he  thought  that  what  he  had  to  give 
would  plead  for  him  better  than  what  he  was. 

The  effect  produced  on  her  by  his  question,  though 
undecipherable,  was  extraordinary.  She  stiffened  a 
little,  remaining  quite  motionless,  her  eyes  on  the  street. 

"  You!"  she  just  breathed;  and  he  saw  that  she  was 
beginning  to  tremble. 

His  wooing  had  been  harsh  and  clumsy — he  was 
afraid  it  had  offended  her,  and  his  hand  trembled  too 
as  it  sought  hers. 

"I  only  thought — it  would  be  a  dull  business  to  most 
women — and  I'm  tied  to  it  for  life.  .  .  but  I  thought 
.  .  .  I've  seen  so  often  how  you  pity  suffering.  .  .  how 
you  long  to  relieve  it.  .  ." 

She  turned  away  from  him  with  a  shuddering  sigh. 
"Oh,  I  hate  suffering!"  she  broke  out,  raising  her 
hands  to  her  face. 

Amherst  was  frightened.  How  senseless  of  him  to 
go  on  reiterating  the  old  plea!  He  ought  to  have 
pleaded  for  himself — to  have  let  the  man  in  him  seek 
her  and  take  his  defeat,  instead  of  beating  about  the 
flimsy  bush  of  philanthropy. 

[  465  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I  only  meant — I  was  trying  to  make  my  work  rec- 
ommend me.  .  ."  he  said  with  a  half -laugh,  as  she 
remained  silent,  her  eyes  still  turned  away. 

The  silence  continued  for  a  long  time — it  stretched 
between  them  like  a  narrowing  interminable  road,  down 
which,  with  a  leaden  heart,  he  seemed  to  watch  her 
gradually  disappearing.  And  then,  unexpectedly,  as 
she  shrank  to  a  tiny  speck  at  the  dip  of  the  road,  the 
perspective  was  mysteriously  reversed,  and  he  felt  her 
growing  nearer  again,  felt  her  close  to  him — felt  her 
hand  in  his. 

"I'm  really  just  like  other  women,  you  know — I 
shall  like  it  because  it's  your  work,"  she  said. 

XXXII 

EVERY  one  agreed  that,  on  the  whole,  Mr.  Lang- 
hope  had  behaved  extremely  well. 
He  was  just  beginning  to  regain  his  equanimity  in 
the  matter  of  the  will — to  perceive  that,  in  the  eyes  of 
the  public,  something  important  and  distinguished  was 
being  done  at  Westmore,  and  that  the  venture,  while 
reducing  Cicely's  income  during  her  minority,  might, 
in  some  incredible  way,  actually  make  for  its  ultimate 
increase.     So  much  Mr.  Langhope,  always  eager  to 
take  the  easiest  view  of  the  inevitable,  had  begun  to 
let  fall  in  his  confidential  comments  on  Amherst-  when 
[  466  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

his  newly-regained  balance  was  rudely  shaken  by  the 
news  of  his  son-in-law's  marriage. 

The  free  expression  of  his  anger  was  baffled  by  the 
fact  that,  even  by  the  farthest  stretch  of  self-extenuating 
logic,  he  could  find  no  one  to  blame  for  the  event  but 
himself. 

"Why  on  earth  don't  you  say  so — don't  you  call  me 
a  triple-dyed  fool  for  bringing  them  together?"  he 
challenged  Mrs.  Ansell,  as  they  had  the  matter  out  to- 
gether in  the  small  intimate  drawing-room  of  her  New 
York  apartment. 

Mrs.  Ansell,  stirring  her  tea  with  a  pensive  hand, 
met  the  challenge  composedly. 

"At  present  you're  doing  it  for  me,  "she  reminded  him; 
"and  after  all,  I'm  not  so  disposed  to  agree  with  you." 

"  Not  agree  with  me  ?  But  you  told  me  not  to  engage 
Miss  Brent!  Didn't  you  tell  me  not  to  engage  her?" 

She  made  a  hesitating  motion  of  assent. 

"But,  good  Lord,  how  was  I  to  help  myself?  No 
man  was  ever  in  such  a  quandary!"  he  broke  off,  leap- 
ing back  to  the  other  side  of  the  argument. 

"No,"  she  said,  looking  up  at  him  suddenly.  "I 
believe  that,  for  the  only  time  in  your  life,  you  were 
sorry  then  that  you  hadn't  married  me." 

She  held  his  eyes  for  a  moment  with  a  look  of  gentle 
malice;  then  he  laughed,  and  drew  forth  his  cigarette- 
case 

[467] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Oh,  come — you've  inverted  the  formula,"  he  said, 
reaching  out  for  the  enamelled  match-box  at  his  elbow. 
She  let  the  pleasantry  pass  with  a  slight  smile,  and  he 
went  on  reverting  to  his  grievance:  "Why  didn't  you 
want  me  to  engage  Miss  Brent?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.  .  .  some  instinct." 

"You  won't  tell  me?" 

"I  couldn't  if  I  tried;  and  now,  after  all " 

"After  all— what?" 

She  reflected.  "You'll  have  Cicely  off  your  mind,  I 
mean." 

"Cicely  off  my  mind?"  Mr.  Langhope  was  begin- 
ning to  find  his  charming  friend  less  consolatory  than 
usual.  After  all,  the  most  magnanimous  woman  has 
her  circuitous  way  of  saying  I  told  you  so.  "As  if  any 
good  governess  couldn't  have  done  that  for  me!"  he 
grumbled. 

"Ah — the  present  care  for  her.  But  I  was  looking 
ahead,"  she  rejoined. 

"To  what— if  I  may  ask  ?" 

"The  next  few  years — when  Mrs.  Amherst  may  have 
children  of  her  own." 

"Children  of  her  own?"  He  bounded  up,  furious 
at  the  suggestion. 

"  Had  it  never  occurred  to  you  ?  " 

"  Hardly  as  a  source  of  consolation ! " 

"I  think  a  philosophic  mind  might  find  it  so." 
[468] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I  should  really  be  interested  to  know  how!" 

Mrs.  Ansell  put  down  her  cup,  and  again  turned  her 
gentle  tolerant  eyes  upon  him. 

"Mr.  Amherst,  as  a  father,  will  take  a  more  con- 
servative view  of  his  duties.  Every  one  agrees  that,  in 
spite  of  his  theories,  he  has  a  good  head  for  business; 
and  whatever  he  does  at  Westmore  for  the  advantage 
of  his  children  will  naturally  be  for  Cicely's  advantage 
too." 

Mr.  Langhope  returned  her  gaze  thoughtfully. 
"There's  something  in  what  you  say,"  he  admitted 
after  a  pause.  "But  it  doesn't  alter  the  fact  that,  with 
Amherst  unmarried,  the  whole  of  the  Westmore  fortune 
would  have  .gone  back  to  Cicely — where  it  belongs." 

"Possibly.  But  it  was  so  unlikely  that  he  would 
remain  unmarried." 

"I  don't  see  why!  A  man  of  honour  would  have  felt 
bound  to  keep  the  money  for  Cicely." 

"  But  you  must  remember  that,  from  Mr.  Amherst's 
standpoint,  the  money  belongs  rather  to  Westmore  than 
to  Cicely." 

"He's  no  better  than  a  socialist,  then!" 

"Well — supposing  he  isn't:  the  birth  of  a  son  and 
heir  will  cure  that." 

Mr.  Langhope  winced,  but  she  persisted  gently:  "It's 
really  safer  for  Cicely  as  it  is — "  and  before  the  end  of 
the  conference  he  found  himself  confessing,  half  against 
[  469  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

his  will:  "Well,  since  he  hadn't  the  decency  to  remain 
single,  I'm  thankful  he  hasn't  inflicted  a  stranger  on  us; 
and  I  shall  never  forget  what  Miss  Brent  did  for  my 
poor  Bessy.  .  ." 

It  was  the  view  she  had  wished  to  bring  him  to,  and 
the  view  which,  in  due  course,  with  all  his  accustomed 
grace  and  adaptability,  he  presented  to  the  searching 
gaze  of  a  society  profoundly  moved  by  the  incident  of 
Amherst's  marriage.  "Of  course,  if  Mr.  Langhope 
approves — "  society  reluctantly  murmured;  and  that 
Mr.  Langhope  did  approve  was  presently  made  mani- 
fest by  every  outward  show  of  consideration  toward  the 
newly- wedded  couple. 

Amherst  and  Justine  had  been  married  in  September; 
and  after  a  holiday  in  Canada  and  the  Adirondacks 
they  returned  to  Hanaford  for  the  winter.  Amherst 
had  proposed  a  short  flight  to  Europe;  but  his  wife 
preferred  to  settle  down  at  once  to  her  new  duties. 

The  announcement  of  her  marriage  had  been  met  by 
Mrs.  Dressel  with  a  comment  which  often  afterward 
returned  to  her  memory.  "It's  splendid  for  you,  of 
course,  dear,  in  one  way,"  her  friend  had  murmured, 
between  disparagement  and  envy — "that  is,  if  you  can 
stand  talking  about  the  Westmore  mill-hands  all  the 
rest  of  your  life." 

"Oh,  but  I  couldn't— I  should  hate  it!"  Justine  had 
[  470  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

energetically  rejoined;  meeting  Mrs.  Dressel's  admon- 
itory "Well,  then?"  with  the  laughing  assurance  that 
she  meant  to  lead  the  conversation. 

She  knew  well  enough  what  the  admonition  meant. 
To  Amherst,  so  long  thwarted  in  his  chosen  work,  the 
subject  of  Westmore  was  becoming  an  idee  fixe;  and 
it  was  natural  that  Hanaford  should  class  him  as  a  man 
of  one  topic.  But  Justine  had  guessed  at  his  other 
side;  a  side  as  long  thwarted,  and  far  less  articulate, 
which  she  intended  to  wake  into  life.  She  had  felt 
it  in  him  from  the  first,  though  their  talks  had  so  uni- 
formly turned  on  the  subject  which  palled  on  Hana- 
ford; and  it  had  been  revealed  to  her  during  the  silent 
hours  among  his  books,  when  she  had  grown  into 
such  close  intimacy  with  his  mind. 

She  did  not,  assuredly,  mean  to  spend  the  rest  of  her 
days  talking  about  the  Westmore  mill-hands;  but  in 
the  arrogance  of  her  joy  she  wished  to  begin  her  married 
life  in  the  setting  of  its  habitual  duties,  and  to  achieve 
the  victory  of  evoking  the  secret  unsuspected  Amherst 
out  of  the  preoccupied  business  man  chained  to  his  task. 
Dull  lovers  might  have  to  call  on  romantic  scenes  to 
wake  romantic  feelings;  but  Justine's  glancing  imagina- 
tion leapt  to  the  challenge  of  extracting  poetry  from  the 
prose  of  routine. 

And  this  was  precisely  the  triumph  that  the  first 
months  brought  her.  To  mortal  eye,  Amherst  and 
[471  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Justine  seemed  to  be  living  at  Hanaford:  in  reality 
they  were  voyaging  on  unmapped  seas  of  adventure. 
The  seas  were  limitless,  and  studded  with  happy  islands: 
every  fresh  discovery  they  made  about  each  other, 
every  new  agreement  of  ideas  and  feelings,  offered  it- 
self to  these  intrepid  explorers  as  a  friendly  coast  where 
they  might  beach  their  keel  and  take  their  bearings. 
Thus,  in  the  thronging  hum  of  metaphor,  Justine  some- 
times pictured  their  relation;  seeing  it,  again,  as  a 
journey  through  crowded  populous  cities,  where  every 
face  she  met  was  Amherst's;  or,  contrarily,  as  a 
multiplication  of  points  of  perception,  so  that  one 
became,  for  the  world's  contact,  a  surface  so  multi- 
tudinously  alive  that  the  old  myth  of  hearing  the 
grass  grow  and  walking  the  rainbow  explained  itself 
as  the  heightening  of  personality  to  the  utmost  pitch 
of  sympathy. 

In  reality,  the  work  at  Westmore  became  an  almost 
necessary  sedative  after  these  flights  into  the  blue.  She 
felt  sometimes  that  they  would  have  been  bankrupted 
of  sensations  if  daily  hours  of  drudgery  had  not  pro- 
vided a  reservoir  in  which  fresh  powers  of  enjoyment 
could  slowly  gather.  And  their  duties  had  the  rarer 
quality  of  constituting,  precisely,  the  deepest,  finest 
bond  between  them,  the  clarifying  element  which  saved 
their  happiness  from  stagnation,  and  kept  it  in  the 
strong  mid-current  of  human  feeling. 
[  472  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

It  was  this  element  in  their  affection  which,  in  the 
last  days  of  November,  was  unexpectedly  put  on  trial. 
Mr.  Langhope,  since  his  return  from  his  annual  visit  to 
Europe,  showed  signs  of  diminishing  strength  and 
elasticity.  He  had  had  to  give  up  his  nightly  dinner 
parties,  to  desert  his  stall  at  the  Opera:  to  take,  in 
short,  as  he  plaintively  put  it,  his  social  pleasures  ho- 
moeopathically.  Certain  of  his  friends  explained  the 
change  by  saying  that  he  had  never  been  "quite  the 
same"  since  his  daughter's  death;  while  others  found 
its  determining  cause  in  the  shock  of  Amherst's  second 
marriage.  But  this  insinuation  Mr.  Langhope  in  due 
time  discredited  by  writing  to  ask  the  Amhersts  if  they 
would  not  pity  his  loneliness  and  spend  the  winter  in 
town  with  him.  The  proposal  came  in  a  letter  to  Jus- 
tine, which  she  handed  to  her  husband  one  afternoon 
on  his  return  from  the  mills. 

She  sat  behind  the  tea-table  in  the  Westmore  draw- 
ing-room, now  at  last  transformed,  not  into  Mrs. 
Dressel's  vision  of  "something  lovely  in  Louis  Seize," 
but  into  a  warm  yet  sober  setting  for  books,  for  scat- 
tered flowers,  for  deep  chairs  and  shaded  lamps  in 
pleasant  nearness  to  each  other. 

Amherst  raised  his  eyes  from  the  letter,  thinking  as 

he  did  so  how  well  her  bright  head,  with  its  flame-like 

play  of  meanings,  fitted  into  the  background  she  had 

made  for  it.     Still  unobservant  of  external  details,  he 

[  473  1 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

was  begininng  to  feel  a  vague  well-being  of  the  eye 
wherever  her  touch  had  passed. 

"Well,  we  must  do  it,"  he  said  simply. 

"Oh,  must  we?"  she  murmured,  holding  out  his 
cup. 

He  smiled  at  her  note  of  dejection.  "Unnatural 
woman!  New  York  versus  Hanaford — do  you  really 
dislike  it  so  much?" 

She  tried  to  bring  a  tone  of  consent  into  her  voice. 
"  I  shall  be  very  glad  to  be  with  Cicely  again — and  that, 
of  course,"  she  reflected,  "  is  the  reason  why  Mr.  Lang- 
hope  wants  us." 

"Well — if  it  is,  it's  a  good  reason." 

"Yes.     But  how  much  shall  you  be  with  us  ?" 

"If  you  say  so,  I'll  arrange  to  get  away  for  a  month 
or  two." 

"Oh,  no:  I  don't  want  that!"  she  said,  with  a  smile 
that  triumphed  a  little.  "But  why  should  not  Cicely 
come  here?" 

"If  Mr.  Langhope  is  cut  off  from  his  usual  amuse- 
ments, I'm  afraid  that  would  only  make  him  more 
lonely." 

"Yes,  I  suppose  so."  She  put  aside  her  untasted 
cup,  resting  her  elbows  on  her  knees,  and  her  chin  on 
her  clasped  hands,  in  the  attitude  habitual  to  her  in 
moments  of  inward  debate. 

Amherst  rose  and  seated  himself  on  the  sofa  beside 
[  474  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

her.  "Dear!  What  is  it  ?"  he  said,  drawing  her  hands 
down,  so  that  she  had  to  turn  her  face  to  his. 

"Nothing.  .  .  I  don't  know.  .  .  a  superstition.  I've 
been  so  happy  here!" 

"Is  our  happiness  too  perishable  to  be  transplanted  ?" 

She  smiled  and  answered  by  another  question.  "You 
don't  mind  doing  it,  then?" 

Amherst  hesitated.  "Shall  I  tell  you?  I  feel  that 
it's  a  sort  of  ring  of  Polycrates.  It  may  buy  off  the 
jealous  gods." 

A  faint  shrinking  from  some  importunate  suggestion 
seemed  to  press  her  closer  to  him.  "Then  you  feel 
they  are  jealous?"  she  breathed,  in  a  half -laugh. 

"I  pity  them  if  they're  not!" 

"Yes,"  she  agreed,  rallying  to  his  tone.  "I  only  had 
a  fancy  that  they  might  overlook  such  a  dull  place  as 
Hanaford." 

Amherst  drew  her  to  him.  "Isn't  it,  on  the  contrary, 
in  the  ash-heaps  that  the  rag-pickers  prowl  ? " 

There  was  no  disguising  it:  she  was  growing  afraid 
of  her  happiness.  Her  husband's  analogy  of  the  ring 
expressed  her  fear.  She  seemed  to  herself  to  carry  a 
blazing  jewel  on  her  breast — something  that  singled 
her  out  for  human  envy  and  divine  pursuit.  She  had 
a  preposterous  longing  to  dress  plainly  and  shabbily, 
to  subdue  her  voice  and  gestures,  to  try  to  slip  through 
[  475  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

life  unnoticed ;  yet  all  the  while  she  knew  that  her  jewel 
would  shoot  its  rays  through  every  disguise.  And  from 
the  depths  of  ancient  atavistic  instincts  came  the  hope 
that  Amherst  was  right — that  by  sacrificing  their 
precious  solitude  to  Mr.  Langhope's  convenience  they 
might  still  deceive  the  gods. 

Once  pledged  to  her  new  task,  Justine,  as  usuai,  es- 
poused it  with  ardour.  It  was  pleasant,  even  among 
greater  joys,  to  see  her  husband  again  frankly  wel- 
comed by  Mr.  Langhope;  to  see  Cicely  bloom  into 
happiness  at  their  coming;  and  to  overhear  Mr.  Lang- 
hope  exclaim,  in  a  confidential  aside  to  his  son-in-law: 
"  It's  wonderful,  the  bien-etre  that  wife  of  yours  diffuses 
about  her!" 

The  element  of  bien-etre  was  the  only  one  in  which 
Mr.  Langhope  could  draw  breath;  and  to  those  who 
kept  him  immersed  in  it  he  was  prodigal  of  delicate 
attentions.  The  experiment,  in  short,  was  a  complete 
success;  and  even  Amherst's  necessary  weeks  at  Hana- 
ford  had  the  merit  of  giving  a  finer  flavour  to  his  brief 
appearances. 

Of  all  this  Justine  was  thinking  as  she  drove  down 
Fifth  Avenue  one  January  afternoon  to  meet  her  hus- 
band at  the  Grand  Central  station.  She  had  tamed 
her  happiness  at  last:  the  quality  of  fear  had  left  it, 
and  it  nestled  in  her  heart  like  some  wild  creature 
[  476  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

subdued  to  human  ways.  And,  as  her  inward  bliss 
became  more  and  more  a  quiet  habit  of  the  mind,  the 
longing  to  help  and  minister  returned,  absorbing  her 
more  deeply  in  her  husband's  work. 

She  dismissed  the  carriage  at  the  station,  and  when 
his  train  had  arrived  they  emerged  together  into  the 
cold  winter  twilight  and  turned  up  Madison  Avenue. 
These  walks  home  from  the  station  gave  them  a  little 
more  time  to  themselves  than  if  they  had  driven;  and 
there  was  always  so  much  to  tell  on  both  sides.  This 
time  the  news  was  all  good;  the  work  at  Westmore  was 
prospering,  and  on  Justine's  side  there  was  a  more 
cheerful  report  of  Mr.  Langhope's  health,  and — best 
of  all — his  promise  to  give  them  Cicely  for  the  summer. 
Amherst  and  Justine  were  both  anxious  that  the  child 
should  spend  more  time  at  Hanaford,  that  her  young 
associations  should  begin  to  gather  about  Westmore; 
and  Justine  exulted  in  the  fact  that  the  suggestion  had 
come  from  Mr.  Langhope  himself,  while  she  and  Am- 
herst were  still  planning  how  to  lead  him  up  to  it. 

They  reached  the  house  while  this  triumph  was  still 
engaging  them;  and  in  the  doorway  Amherst  turned  to 
her  with  a  smile. 

"And  of  course — dear  man! — he  believes  the  idea  is 
all  his.  There's  nothing  you  can't  make  people  be- 
lieve, you  little  Jesuit!" 

"I  don't  think  there  is!"  she  boasted,  falling  gaily 
[  477  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

into  his  tone;  and  then,  as  the  door  opened,  and  she 
entered  the  hall,  her  eyes  fell  on  a  blotted  envelope 
which  lay  among  the  letters  on  the  table. 

The  parlour-maid  proffered  it  with  a  word  of  ex- 
planation- "A  gentleman  left  it  for  you,  madam;  he 
asked  to  see  you,  and  said  he'd  call  for  the  answer  in  a 
day  or  two." 

"Another  begging  letter,  I  suppose,"  said  Amherst, 
turning  into  the  drawing-room,  where  Mr.  Langhope 
and  Cicely  awaited  them;  and  Justine,  carelessly  push- 
ing the  envelope  into  her  muff,  murmured  "I  suppose 
so"  as  she  followed  him. 

XXXIII 

OVER   the   tea-table  Justine  forgot  the  note  in 
her  muff;  but  when  she  went  upstairs  to  dress 
it  fell  to  the  floor,  and  she  picked  it  up  and  laid  it  on 
her  dressing-table. 

She  had  already  recognized  the  hand  as  Wyant's, 

for  it  was  not  the  first  letter  she  had  received  from  him. 

Three  times  since  her  marriage  he  had  appealed  to 

her  for  help,  excusing  himself  on  the  plea  of  difficulties 

and  ill-health.     The   first   time  he  wrote,  he  alluded 

vaguely  to  having  married,  and  to  being  compelled, 

through  illness,  to  give  up  his  practice  at  Clifton.     On 

receiving  this  letter  she  made  enquiries,  and  learned 

[  478  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

that,  a  month  or  two  after  her  departure  from  Lyn- 
brook,  Wyant  had  married  a  Clifton  girl — a  pretty 
piece  of  flaunting  innocence,  whom  she  remembered 
about  the  lanes,  generally  with  a  young  man  in  a  buggy. 
There  had  evidently  been  something  obscure  and  pre- 
cipitate about  the  marriage,  which  was  a  strange  one 
for  the  ambitious  young  doctor.  Justine  conjectured 
that  it  might  have  been  the  cause  of  his  leaving  Cilfton 
— or  perhaps  he  had  already  succumbed  to  the  fatal 
habit  she  had  suspected  in  him.  At  any  rate  he  seemed, 
in  some  mysterious  way,  to  have  dropped  in  two  years 
from  promise  to  failure;  yet  she  could  not  believe  that, 
with  his  talents,  and  the  name  he  had  begun  to  make, 
such  a  lapse  could  be  more  than  temporary.  She  had 
often  heard  Dr.  Garford  prophesy  great  things  for  him; 
but  Dr.  Garford  had  died  suddenly  during  the  previous 
summer,  and  the  loss  of  this  powerful  friend  was  men- 
tioned by  Wyant  among  his  misfortunes. 

Justine  was  anxious  to  help  him,  but  her  marriage 
to  a  rich  man  had  not  given  her  the  command  of  much 
money.  She  and  Amherst,  choosing  to  regard  them- 
selves as  pensioners  on  the  Westmore  fortune,  were 
scrupulous  in  restricting  their  personal  expenditure; 
and  her  work  among  the  mill-hands  brought  many  de- 
mand* on  the  modest  allowance  which  her  husband  had 
insisted  on  her  accepting.  In  reply  to  Wyant's  first 
appeal,  which  reached  her  soon  after  her  marriage,  she 
[  479  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

had  sent  him  a  hundred  dollars;  but  when  the  second 
came,  some  two  months  later — with  a  fresh  tale  of  ill- 
luck  and  ill-health — she  had  not  been  able  to  muster 
more  than  half  the  amount.  Finally  a  third  letter  had 
arrived,  a  short  time  before  their  leaving  for  New  York. 
It  told  the  same  story  ot  persistent  misfortune,  but  on 
this  occasion  Wyant,  instead  of  making  a  direct  appeal 
for  money,  suggested  that,  through  her  hospital  con- 
nections, she  should  help  him  to  establish  a  New  York 
practice.  His  tone  was  half-whining,  half-peremptory, 
his  once  precise  writing  smeared  and  illegible;  and 
these  indications,  combined  with  her  former  suspicions, 
convinced  her  that,  for  the  moment,  he  was  unfit  for 
medical  work.  At  any  rate,  she  could  not  assume  the 
responsibility  of  recommending  him;  and  in  answering 
she  advised  him  to  apply  to  some  of  the  physicians  he 
had  worked  with  at  Lynbrook,  softening  her  refusal  by 
the  enclosure  of  a  small  sum  of  money.  To  this  letter 
she  received  no  answer.  Wyant  doubtless  found  the 
money  insufficient,  and  resented  her  unwillingness  to 
help  him  by  the  use  of  her  influence;  and  she  felt  sure 
that  the  note  before  her  contained  a  renewal  of  his 
former  request. 

An  obscure  reluctance  made  her  begin  to  undress 

before  opening  it.     She  felt  slightly  tired  and  indolently 

happy,  and  she  did  not  wish  any  jarring  impression  to 

break  in  on  the  sense  of  completeness  which  her  hus- 

[  480  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

band's  coming  always  put  into  her  life.  Her  happiness 
was  making  her  timid  and  luxurious:  she  was  begin- 
ning to  shrink  from  even  trivial  annoyances. 

But  when  at  length,  in  her  dressing-gown,  her  loosened 
hair  about  her  shoulders,  she  seated  herself  before  the 
toilet-mirror,  Wyant's  note  once  more  confronted  her. 
It  was  absurd  to  put  off  reading  it — if  he  asked  for 
money  again,  she  would  simply  confide  the  whole  busi- 
ness to  Amherst. 

She  had  never  spoken  to  her  husband  of  her  corre- 
spondence with  Wyant.  The  mere  fact  that  the  latter 
had  appealed  to  her,  instead  of  addressing  himself  to 
Amherst,  made  her  suspect  that  he  had  a  weakness  to 
hide,  and  counted  on  her  professional  discretion.  But 
his  continued  importunities  would  certainly  release  her 
from  any  such  supposed  obligation;  and  she  thought 
with  relief  of  casting  the  weight  of  her  difficulty  on  her 
husband's  shoulders. 

She  opened  the  note  and  read. 

"I  did  not  acknowledge  your  last  letter  because  I 
was  ashamed  to  tell  you  that  the  money  was  not  enough 
to  be  of  any  use.  But  I  am  past  shame  now.  My 
wife  was  confined  three  weeks  ago,  and  has  been  des- 
perately ill  ever  since.  She  is  in  no  state  to  move,  but 
we  shall  be  put  out  of  these  rooms  unless  I  can  get 
money  or  work  at  once.  A  word  from  you  would 
have  given  me  a  start  in  New  York — and  I'd  be 
[  481  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

willing  to  begin  again  as  an  interne  or  a  doctor's 
assistant. 

"I  have  never  reminded  you  of  what  you  owe  me, 
and  I  should  not  do  so  now  if  I  hadn't  been  to  hell  and 
back  since  I  saw  you.  But  I  suppose  you  would  rather 
have  me  remind  you  than  apply  to  Mr.  Amherst.  You 
can  tell  me  when  to  call  for  my  answer." 

Justine  laid  down  the  letter  and  looked  up.  Her 
eyes  rested  on  her  own  reflection  in  the  glass,  and  it 
frightened  her.  She  sat  motionless,  with  a  thickly- 
beating  heart,  one  hand  clenched  on  the  letter. 

*'/  suppose  you  would  rather  have  me  remind  you 
than  apply  to  Mr.  Amherst." 

That  was  what  his  importunity  meant,  then!  She 
had  been  paying  blackmail  all  this  time.  .  .  Some- 
where, from  the  first,  in  an  obscure  fold  of  conscious- 
ness, she  had  felt  the  stir  of  an  unnamed,  unacknowl- 
edged fear;  and  now  the  fear  raised  its  head  and  looked 
at  her.  Well!  She  would  look  back  at  it,  then:  look 
it  straight  in  the  malignant  eye.  What  was  it,  after 
all,  but  a  "bugbear  to  scare  children" — the  ghost  of 
the  opinion  of  the  many  ?  She  had  suspected  from  the 
first  that  Wyant  knew  of  her  having  shortened  the  term 
of  Bessy  Amherst's  sufferings — returning  to  the  room 
when  he  did,  it  was  almost  impossible  that  he  should 
not  have  guessed  what  had  happened;  and  his  silence 
had  made  her  believe  that  he  understood  her  motive 
[  482  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

and  approved  it.  But,  supposing  she  had  been  mis- 
taken, she  still  had  nothing  to  fear,  since  she  had  done 
nothing  that  her  own  conscience  condemned.  If  the 
act  were  to  do  again  she  would  do  it — she  had  never 
known  a  moment's  regret! 

Suddenly  she  heard  Amherst's  step  in  the  passage — 
heard  him  laughing  and  talking  as  he  chased  Cicely  up 
the  stairs  to  the  nursery. 

//  she  was  not  afraid,  why  had  she  never  told  Am- 
herst? 

Why,  the  answer  to  that  was  simple  enough!  She 
had  not  told  him  because  she  was  not  afraid.  From  the 
first  she  had  retained  sufficient  detachment  to  view  her 
act  impartially,  to  find  it  completely  justified  by  cir- 
cumstances, and  to  decide  that,  since  those  circum- 
stances could  be  but  partly  and  indirectly  known  to  her 
husband,  she  not  only  had  the  right  to  keep  her  own 
counsel,  but  was  actually  under  a  kind  of  obligation 
not  to  force  on  him  the  knowledge  of  a  fact  that  he 
could  not  alter  and  could  not  completely  judge.  .  . 
Was  there  any  flaw  in  this  line  of  reasoning?  Did  it 
not  show  a  deliberate  weighing  of  conditions,  a  perfect 
rectitude  of  intention?  And,  after  all,  she  had  had 
Amherst's  virtual  consent  to  her  act!  She  knew  his 
feelings  on  such  matters — his  independence  of  tradi- 
tional judgments,  his  horror  of  inflicting  needless  pain — 
she  was  as  sure  of  his  intellectual  assent  as  of  her  own. 
[  483  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

She  was  even  sure  that,  when  she  told  him,  he  would 
appreciate  her  reasons  for  not  telling  him  before.  .  . 

For  now  of  course  he  must  know  everything — this 
horrible  letter  made  it  inevitable.  She  regretted  that 
she  had  decided,  though  for  the  best  of  reasons,  not  to 
speak  to  him  of  her  own  accord;  for  it  was  intolerable 
that  he  should  think  of  any  external  pressure  as  having 
brought  her  to  avowal.  But  no!  he  would  not  think 
that.  The  understanding  between  them  was  so  com- 
plete that  no  deceptive  array  of  circumstances  could 
ever  make  her  motives  obscure  to  him.  She  let  herself 
rest  a  moment  in  the  thought.  .  . 

Presently  she  heard  him  moving  in  the  next  room — 
he  had  come  back  to  dress  for  dinner.  She  would  go 
to  him  now,  at  once — she  could  not  bear  this  weight  on 
her  mind  the  whole  evening.  She  pushed  back  her 
chair,  crumpling  the  letter  in  her  hand;  but  as  she  did 
so,  her  eyes  again  fell  on  her  reflection.  She  could  not 
go  to  her  husband  with  such  a  face!  If  she  was  not 
afraid,  why  did  she  look  like  that  ? 

Well — she  was  afraid!  It  would  be  easier  and  sim- 
pler to  admit  it.  She  was  afraid — afraid  for  the  first 
time — afraid  for  her  own  happiness!  She  had  had  just 
eight  months  of  happiness — it  was  horrible  to  think  of 
losing  it  so  soon.  .  .  Losing  it  ?  But  why  should  she 
lose  it?  The  letter  must  have  affected  her  brain.  .  . 
all  her  thoughts  were  in  a  blur  of  fear.  .  .  Fear  of 
[  484  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

what?  Of  the  man  who  understood  her  as  no  one 
else  understood  her?  The  man  to  whose  wisdom  and 
mercy  she  trusted  as  the  believer  trusts  in  God  ?  This 
was  a  kind  of  abominable  nightmare — even  Amherst's 
image  had  been  distorted  in  her  mind!  The  only  way 
to  clear  her  brain,  to  recover  the  normal  sense  of  things, 
was  to  go  to  him  now,  at  once,  to  feel  his  arms  about 
her,  to  let  his  kiss  dispel  her  fears.  .  .  She  rose  with 
a  long  breath  of  relief. 

She  had  to  cross  the  length  of  the  room  to  reach  his 
door,  and  when  she  had  gone  half-way  she  heard  him 
knock. 

"May  I  come  in?" 

She  was  close  to  the  fire-place,  and  a  bright  fire 
burned  on  the  hearth. 

"Come  in!"  she  answered;  and  as  she  did  so,  she 
turned  and  dropped  Wyant's  letter  into  the  fire.  Her 
hand  had  crushed  it  into  a  little  ball,  and  she  saw  the 
flames  spring  up  and  swallow  it  before  her  husband 
entered. 

It  was  not  that  she  had  changed  her  mind — she  still 
meant  to  tell  him  everything.  But  to  hold  the  letter 
was  like  holding  a  venomous  snake — she  wanted  to 
exterminate  it,  to  forget  that  she  had  ever  seen  the 
blotted  repulsive  characters.  And  she  could  not  bear 
to  have  Amherst's  eyes  rest  on  it,  to  have  him  know 
that  any  man  had  dared  to  write  to  her  in  that  tone. 
[  485  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

What  vile  meanings  might  not  be  read  between  Wyant's 
phrases  ?  She  had  a  right  to  tell  the  story  in  her  own 
way — the  true  way.  .  . 

As  Amherst  approached,  in  his  evening  clothes,  the 
heavy  locks  smoothed  from  his  forehead,  a  flower  of 
Cicely's  giving  in  his  button-hole,  she  thought  she  had 
never  seen  him  look  so  kind  and  handsome. 

"  Not  dressed  ?  Do  you  know  that  it's  ten  minutes 
to  eight?"  he  said,  coming  up  to  her  with  a  smile. 

She  roused  herself,  putting  her  hands  to  her  hair. 
"Yes,  I  know — I  forgot,"  she  murmured,  longing  to 
feel  his  arms  about  her,  but  standing  rooted  to  the 
ground,  unable  to  move  an  inch  nearer. 

It  was  he  who  came  close,  drawing  her  lifted  hands 
into  his.  "You  look  worried — I  hope  it  was  nothing 
troublesome  that  made  you  forget?" 

The  divine  kindness  in  his  voice,  his  eyes!  Yes — it 
would  be  easy,  quite  easy,  to  tell  him.  .  . 

"No — yes — I  was  a  little  troubled.  .  ."  she  said, 
feeling  the  warmth  of  his  touch  flow  through  her  hands 
reassuringly. 

"Dear!    What  about?" 

She  drew  a  deep  breath.     "The  letter " 

He  looked  puzzled.     "  What  letter  ?  " 

"Downstairs.  .  .  when  we  came  in.  .  .  it  was  not  an 
ordinary  begging-letter." 

"No?    What  then?"  he  asked,  his  face  clouding. 
[  486  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

She  noticed  the  change,  and  it  frightened  her.  Was 
he  angry?  Was  he  going  to  be  angry?  But  how 
absurd!  He  was  only  distressed  at  her  distress. 

"What  then  ?"  he  repeated,  more  gently. 

She  looked  up  into  his  eyes  for  an  instant.  "It  was 

a  horrible  letter "  she  whispered,  as  she  pressed  her 

clasped  hands  against  him. 

His  grasp  tightened  on  her  wrists,  and  again  the  stern 
look  srossed  his  face.  "  Horrible  ?  What  do  you  mean  ?  " 

She  had  never  seen  him  angry — but  she  felt  suddenly 
that,  to  the  guilty  creature,  his  anger  would  be  terrible. 
He  would  crush  Wyant — she  must  be  careful  how  she 
spoke. 

"I  didn't  mean  that — only  painful.  .  ." 

"Where  is  the  letter?     Let  me  see  it." 

"Oh,  no  "  she  exclaimed,  shrinking  away. 

"Justine,  what  has  happened?     What  ails  you?" 

On  a  blind  impulse  she  had  backed  toward  the 
hearth,  propping  her  arms  against  the  mantel-piece 
while  she  stole  a  secret  glance  at  the  embers.  Nothing 
remained  of  it — no,  nothing. 

But  suppose  it  was  against  herself  that  his  anger 
turned  ?  The  idea  was  preposterous,  yet  she  trembled 
at  it.  It  was  clear  that  she  must  say  something  at 
once — must  somehow  account  for  her  agitation.  But 
the  sense  that  she  was  unnerved — no  longer  in  control 
of  her  face,  her  voice — made  her  feel  that  she  would 
[  487  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

tell  her  story  badly  if  she  told  it  now.  .  .  Had  she  not 
the  right  to  gain  a  respite,  to  choose  her  own  hour? 
Weakness — weakness  again!  Every  delay  would  only 
increase  the  phantom  terror.  Now,  now — with  her 
head  on  his  breast! 

She  turned  toward  him  and  began  to  speak  impulsively. 

"I  can't  show  you  the  letter,  because  it's  not — not 
my  secret ' 

"Ah?"  he  murmured,  perceptibly  relieved. 

"It's  from  some  one — unlucky — whom  I've  known 
about.  .  ." 

"  And  whose  troubles  have  been  troubling  you  ?  But 
can't  we  help?" 

She  shone  on  him  through  gleaming  lashes.  "Some 

one  poor  and  ill — who  needs  money,  I  mean "  She 

tried  to  laugh  away  her  tears.  "And  I  haven't  any! 
That's  my  trouble!" 

"  Foolish  child !  And  to  beg  you  are  ashamed  ?  And 
so  you're  letting  your  tears  cool  Mr.  Langhope's  soup  ?  " 
He  had  her  in  his  arms  now,  his  kisses  drying  her 
cheek;  and  she  turned  her  head  so  that  their  lips  met 
in  a  long  pressure. 

"Will  a  hundred  dollars  do?"  he  asked  with  a  smile 
as  he  released  her. 

A  hundred  dollars!  No — she  was  almost  sure  they 
would  not.  But  she  tried  to  shape  a  murmur  of  grati- 
tude. "Thank  you— thank  you!  I  hated  to  ask.  .  ." 
[  488  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I'll  write  the  cheque  at  once." 

"No — no,"  she  protested,  "there's  no  hurry." 

But  he  went  back  to  his  room,  and  she  turned  again 
to  the  toilet-table.  Her  face  was  painful  to  look  at 
still — but  a  light  was  breaking  through  its  fear.  She 
felt  the  touch  of  a  narcotic  in  her  veins.  How  calm 
and  peaceful  the  room  was — and  how  delicious  to 
think  that  her  life  would  go  on  in  it,  safely  and  peace- 
fully, in  the  old  familiar  way! 

As  she  swept  up  her  hair,  passing  the  comb  through 
it,  and  flinging  it  dexterously  over  her  lifted  wrist,  she 
heard  Amherst  cross  the  floor  behind  her,  and  pause  to 
lay  something  on  her  writing-table. 

"Thank  you,"  she  murmured  again,  lowering  her 
head  as  he  passed. 

When  the  door  had  closed  on  him  she  thrust  the  last 
pin  into  her  hair,  dashed  some  drops  of  Cologne  on  her 
face,  and  went  over  to  the  writing-table.  As  she  picked 
up  the  cheque  she  saw  it  was  for  three  hundred  dollars. 

XXXIV 

ONCE  or  twice,  in  the  days  that  followed,  Justine 
found   herself   thinking    that    she    had   never 
known  happiness  before.     The  old  state  of  secure  well- 
being  seemed  now  like  a  dreamless  sleep;   but  this  new 
bliss,  on  its  sharp  pinnacle  ringed  with  fire — this  thrill- 
[  489  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

ing  conscious  joy,  daily  and  hourly  snatched  from  fear 
—this  was  living,  not  sleeping! 

Wyant  acknowledged  her  gift  with  profuse,  almost 
servile  thanks.  She  had  sent  it  without  a  word — say- 
ing to  herself  that  pity  for  his  situation  made  it  possible 
to  ignore  his  baseness.  And  the  days  went  on  as 
before.  She  was  not  conscious  of  any  change,  save  in 
the  heightened,  almost  artificial  quality  of  her  happi- 
ness, till  one  day  in  March,  when  Mr.  Langhope  an- 
nounced that  he  was  going  for  two  or  three  weeks  to 
a  friend's  shooting-box  in  the  south.  The  anniversary 
of  Bessy's  death  was  approaching,  and  Justine  knew 
that  at  that  time  he  always  absented  himself. 

"Supposing  you  and  Amherst  were  to  carry  off  Cicely 
till  I  come  back  ?  Perhaps  you  could  persuade  him  to 
break  away  from  work  for  once — or,  if  that's  impossi- 
ble, you  could  take  her  with  you  to  Hanaford.  She  looks 
a  little  pale,  and  the  change  would  be  good  for  her." 

This  was  a  great  concession  on  Mr.  Langhope's 
part,  and  Justine  saw  the  pleasure  in  her  husband's 
face.  It  was  the  first  time  that  his  father-in-law  had 
suggested  Cicely's  going  to  Hanaford. 

"I'm  afraid  I  can't  break  away  just  now,  sir,"  Am- 
herst said,  "but  it  will  be  delightful  for  Justine  if 
you'll  give  us  Cicely  while  you're  away." 

"Take  her  by  all  means,  my  dear  fellow:   I  always 
sleep  on  both  ears  when  she's  with  your  wife." 
[  490  1 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

It  was  nearly  three  months  since  Justine  had  left 
Hanaford — and  now  she  was  to  return  there  alone  with 
her  husband!  There  would  be  hours,  of  course,  when 
the  child's  presence  was  between  them — or  when,  again, 
his  work  would  keep  him  at  the  mills.  But  in  the 
evenings,  when  Cicely  was  in  bed — when  he  and  she 
sat  alone  together  in  the  Westmore  drawing-room — in 
Bessy's  drawing-room  I .  .  .  No — she  must  find  some 
excuse  for  remaining  away  till  she  had  again  grown 
used  to  the  idea  of  being  alone  with  Amherst.  Every 
day  she  was  growing  a  little  more  used  to  it;  but  it 
would  take  time — time,  and  the  full  assurance  that 
Wyant  was  silenced.  Till  then  she  could  not  go  back 
to  Hanaford. 

She  found  a  pretext  in  her  own  health.  She  pleaded 
that  she  was  a  little  tired,  below  par.  .  .  and  to  return 
to  Hanaford  meant  returning  to  hard  work;  with  the 
best  will  in  the  world  she  could  not  be  idle  there. 
Might  she  not,  she  suggested,  take  Cicely  to  Tuxedo 
or  Lakewood,  and  thus  get  quite  away  from  house- 
hold cares  and  good  works  ?  The  pretext  rang  hollow 
— it  was  so  unlike  her!  She  saw  Amherst 's  eyes  rest 
anxiously  on  her  as  Mr.  Langhope  uttered  his  prompt 
assent.  Certainly  she  did  look  tired — Mr.  Langhope 
himself  had  noticed  it.  Had  he  perhaps  over-taxed 
her  energies,  left  the  household  too  entirely  on  her 
shoulders  ?  Oh,  no — it  was  only  the  New  York  air.  .  . 
[  491  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

like  Cicely,  she  pined  for  a  breath  of  the  woods.  .  . 
And  so,  the  day  Mr.  Langhope  left,  she  and  Cicely 
were  packed  off  to  Lakewood. 

They  stayed  there  a  week:  then  a  fit  of  restlessness 
drove  Justine  back  to  town.  She  found  an  excuse  in 
the  constant  rain — it  was  really  useless,  as  she  wrote 
Mr.  Langhope,  to  keep  the  child  imprisoned  in  an 
over-heated  hotel  while  they  could  get  no  benefit  from 
the  outdoor  life.  In  reality,  she  found  the  long  lonely 
hours  unendurable.  She  pined  for  a  sight  of  her  hus- 
band, and  thought  of  committing  Cicely  to  Mrs.  An- 
sell's  care,  and  making  a  sudden  dash  for  Hanaford. 
But  the  vision  of  the  long  evenings  in  the  Westmore 
drawing-room  again  restrained  her.  No — she  would 
simply  go  back  to  New  York,  dine  out  occasionally, 
go  to  a  concert  or  two,  trust  to  the  usual  demands  of 
town  life  to  crowd  her  hours  with  small  activities.  .  . 
And  in  another  week  Mr.  Langhope  would  be  back 
and  the  days  would  resume  their  normal  course. 

On  arriving,  she  looked  feverishly  through  the  letters 
in  the  hall.  None  from  Wyant — that  fear  was  allayed! 
Every  day  added  to  her  reassurance.  By  this  time,  no 
doubt,  he  was  on  his  feet  again,  and  ashamed — un- 
utterably ashamed — of  the  threat  that  despair  had 
wrung  from  him.  She  felt  almost  sure  that  his  shame 
would  keep  him  from  ever  attempting  to  see  her,  or 
even  from  writing  again. 

[  498  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"A  gentleman  called  to  see  you  yesterday,  madam — 
he  would  give  no  name,"  the  parlour-maid  said.  And 
there  was  the  sick  fear  back  on  her  again!  She  could 
hardly  control  the  trembling  of  her  lips  as  she  asked: 
"Did  he  leave  no  message?" 

"No,  madam:  he  only  wanted  to  know  when  you'd 
be  back." 

She  longed  to  return:  "And  did  you  tell  him?'* 
but  restrained  herself,  and  passed  into  the  drawing- 
room.  After  all,  the  parlour-maid  had  not  described 
the  caller — why  jump  to  the  conclusion  that  it  was 
Wyant? 

Three  days  passed,  and  no  letter  came — no  sign. 
She  struggled  with  the  temptation  to  describe  Wyant 
to  the  servants,  and  to  forbid  his  admission.  But  it 
would  not  do.  They  were  nearly  all  old  servants,  in 
whose  eyes  she  was  still  the  intruder,  the  upstart  sick- 
nurse — she  could  not  wholly  trust  them.  And  each 
day  she  felt  a  little  easier,  a  little  more  convinced  that 
the  unknown  visitor  had  not  been  Wyant. 

On  the  fourth  day  she  received  a  letter  from  Am- 
herst.  He  hoped  to  be  back  on  the  morrow,  but  as 
his  plans  were  still  uncertain  he  would  telegraph  in 
the  morning — and  meanwhile  she  must  keep  well,  and 
rest,  and  amuse  herself.  .  . 

Amuse  herself!  That  evening,  as  it  happened,  she 
was  going  to  the  theatre  with  Mrs.  Ansell.  She  and 
[  493  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Mrs.  Ansell,  though  outwardly  on  perfect  terms,  had 
not  greatly  advanced  in  intimacy.  The  agitated,  de- 
centralized life  of  the  older  woman  seemed  futile  and 
trivial  to  Justine;  but  on  Mr.  Langhope's  account 
she  wished  to  keep  up  an  appearance  of  friendship  with 
his  friend,  and  the  same  motive  doubtless  inspired  Mrs. 
Ansell.  Just  now,  at  any  rate,  Justine  was  grateful  for 
her  attentions,  and  glad  to  go  about  with  her.  Any- 
thing— anything  to  get  away  from  her  own  thoughts! 
That  was  the  pass  she  had  come  to. 

At  the  theatre,  in  a  proscenium  box,  the  publicity, 
the  light  and  movement,  the  action  of  the  play,  all 
helped  to  distract  and  quiet  her.  At  such  moments 
she  grew  ashamed  of  her  fears.  Why  was  she  torment- 
ing herself?  If  anything  happened  she  had  only  to 
ask  her  husband  for  more  money.  She  never  spoke 
to  him  of  her  good  works,  and  there  would  be  nothing 
to  excite  suspicion  in  her  asking  help  again  for  the 
friend  whose  secret  she  was  pledged  to  keep.  .  .  But 
nothing  was  going  to  happen.  As  the  play  progressed, 
and  the  stimulus  of  talk  and  laughter  flowed  through 
her  veins,  she  felt  a  complete  return  of  confidence. 
And  then  suddenly  she  glanced  across  the  house,  and 
saw  Wyant  looking  at  her. 

He  sat  rather  far  back,  in  one  of  the  side  rows  just 
beneath  the  balcony,  so  that  his  face  was  partly  shaded. 
But  even  in  the  shadow  it  frightened  her.  She  had 
[  494  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

been  prepared  for  a  change,  but  not  for  this  ghastly 
deterioration.     And  he  continued  to  look  at  her. 

She  began  to  be  afraid  that  he  would  do  something 
conspicuous — point  at  her,  or  stand  up  in  his  seat. 
She  thought  he  looked  half-mad — or  was  it  her  own 
hallucination  that  made  him  appear  so  ?  She  and  Mrs. 
Ansell  were  alone  in  the  box  for  the  moment,  and  she 
started  up,  pushing  back  her  chair.  .  . 

Mrs.  Ansell  leaned  forward.  "What  is  it?" 
"Nothing — the  heat — I'll  sit  back  for  a  moment." 
But  as  she  withdrew  into  the  back  of  the  box,  she 
was  seized  by  a  new  fear.  If  he  was  still  watching, 
might  he  not  come  to  the  door  and  try  to  speak  to 
her?  Her  only  safety  lay  in  remaining  in  full  view  of 
the  audience;  and  she  returned  to  Mrs.  Ansell 's  side. 
The  other  members  of  the  party  came  back — the 
bell  rang,  the  foot-lights  blazed,  the  curtain  rose.  She 
lost  herself  in  the  mazes  of  the  play.  She  sat  so  mo- 
tionless, her  face  so  intently  turned  toward  the  stage, 
that  the  muscles  at  the  back  of  her  neck  began  to 
stiffen.  And  then,  quite  suddenly,  toward  the  middle 
of  the  act,  she  felt  an  undefinable  sense  of  relief.  She 
could  not  tell  what  caused  it — but  slowly,  cautiously, 
while  the  eyes  of  the  others  were  intent  upon  the  stage, 
she  turned  her  head  and  looked  toward  Wyant's  seat. 
It  was  empty. 

Her  first  thought  was  that  he  had  gone  to  wait  for 
[  495  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

her  outside.  But  no — there  were  two  more  acts:  why 
should  he  stand  at  the  door  for  half  the  evening  ? 

At  last  the  act  ended ;  the  entr'acte  elapsed ;  the  play 
went  on  again — and  still  the  seat  was  empty.  Gradu- 
ally she  persuaded  herself  that  she  had  been  mistaken 
in  thinking  that  the  man  who  had  occupied  it  was 
Wyant.  Her  self-command  returned,  she  began  to 
think  and  talk  naturally,  to  follow  the  dialogue  on  the 
stage — and  when  the  evening  was  over,  and  Mrs.  An- 
sell  set  her  down  at  her  door,  she  had  almost  forgotten 
her  fears. 

The  next  morning  she  felt  calmer  than  for  many  days. 
She  was  sure  now  that  if  Wyant  had  wished  to  speak 
to  her  he  would  have  waited  at  the  door  of  the  theatre; 
and  the  recollection  of  his  miserable  face  made  appre- 
hension yield  to  pity.  She  began  to  feel  that  she  had 
treated  him  coldly,  uncharitably.  They  had  been 
friends  once,  as  well  as  fellow- workers;  but  she  had 
been  false  even  to  the  comradeship  of  the  hospital. 
She  should  have  sought  him  out  and  given  him  sym- 
pathy as  well  as  money;  had  she  shown  some  sign  of 
human  kindness  his  last  letter  might  never  have  been 
written. 

In  the  course  of  the  morning  Amherst  telegraphed 

that  he  hoped  to  settle  his  business  in  time  to  catch 

the  two  o'clock  express,  but  that  his  plans  were  still 

uncertain.     Justine   and    Cicely   lunched    alone,    and 

[  496  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

after  luncheon  the  little  girl  was  despatched  to  her 
dancing-class.  Justine  herself  meant  to  go  out  when 
the  brougham  returned.  She  went  up  to  her  room  to 
dress,  planning  to  drive  in  the  park,  and  to  drop  in  on 
Mrs.  Ansell  before  she  called  for  Cicely;  but  on  the 
way  downstairs  she  saw  the  servant  opening  the  door 
to  a  visitor.  It  was  too  late  to  draw  back;  and  de- 
scending the  last  steps  she  found  herself  face  to  face 
with  Wyant. 

They  looked  at  each  other  a  moment  in  silence;  then 
Justine  murmured  a  word  of  greeting  and  led  the  way 
to  the  drawing-room. 

It  was  a  snowy  afternoon,  and  in  the  raw  ash-coloured 
light  she  thought  he  looked  more  changed  than  at  the 
theatre.  She  remarked,  too,  that  his  clothes  were 
worn  and  untidy,  his  gloveless  hands  soiled  and  tremu- 
lous. None  of  the  degrading  signs  of  his  infirmity  were 
lacking;  and  she  saw  at  once  that,  while  in  the  early 
days  of  the  habit  he  had  probably  mixed  his  drugs,  so 
that  the  conflicting  symptoms  neutralized  each  other, 
he  had  now  sunk  into  open  morphia-taking.  She  felt 
profoundly  sorry  for  him;  yet  as  he  followed  her  into 
the  room  physical  repulsion  again  mastered  the  sense 
of  pity. 

But  where  action  was  possible  she  was  always  self- 
controlled,  and  she  turned  to  him  quietly  as  they  seated 
themselves. 

[  497  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I  have  been  wishing  to  see  you,"  she  said,  looking 
at  him.  "I  have  felt  that  I  ought  to  have  done  so 
sooner — to  have  told  you  how  sorry  I  am  for  your  bad 
luck." 

He  returned  her  glance  with  surprise:  they  were 
evidently  the  last  words  he  had  expected. 

"You're  very  kind,"  he  said  in  a  low  embarrassed 
voice.  He  had  kept  on  his  shabby  over-coat,  and  he 
twirled  his  hat  in  his  hands  as  he  spoke. 

"I  have  felt,"  Justine  continued,  "that  perhaps  a 
talk  with  you  might  be  of  more  use — 

He  raised  his  head,  fixing  her  with  bright  narrowed 
eyes.  "  I  have  felt  so  too :  that's  my  reason  for  coming. 
You  sent  me  a  generous  present  some  weeks  ago — but 
I  don't  want  to  go  on  living  on  charity." 

"I  understand  that,"  she  answered.  "But  why  have 
you  had  to  do  so  ?  Won't  you  tell  me  just  what  has 
happened?" 

She  felt  the  words  to  be  almost  a  mockery;  yet  she 
could  not  say  "I  read  your  history  at  a  glance";  and 
she  hoped  that  her  question  might  draw  out  his 
wretched  secret,  and  thus  give  her  the  chance  to 
speak  frankly.  ' 

He  gave  a  nervous  laugh.     "Just  what  has  hap- 
pened ?    It's  a  long  story — and  some  of  the  details  are 
not  particularly  pretty."     He  broke  off,  moving  his  hat 
more  rapidly  through  his  trembling  hands. 
[  498  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Never  mind:  tell  me." 

"Well — after  you  all  left  Lynbrook  I  had  rather  a 
bad  break-down — the  strain  of  Mrs.  Amherst's  case,  I 
suppose.  You  remember  Bramble,  the  Clifton  grocer  ? 
Miss  Bramble  nursed  me — I  daresay  you  remember  her 
too.  When  I  recovered  I  married  her — and  after  that 
things  didn't  go  well." 

He  paused,  breathing  quickly,  and  looking  about  the 
room  with  odd,  furtive  glances.  "I  was  only  half- well, 
anyhow — I  couldn't  attend  to  my  patients  properly — 
and  after  a  few  months  we  decided  to  leave  Clifton, 
and  I  bought  a  practice  in  New  Jersey.  But  my  wife 
was  ill  there,  and  things  went  wrong  again — damnably. 
I  suppose  you've  guessed  that  my  marriage  was  a  mis- 
take. She  had  an  idea  that  we  should  do  better  in 
New  York — so  we  came  here  a  few  months  ago,  and 
we've  done  decidedly  worse." 

Justine  listened  with  a  sense  of  discouragement. 
She  saw  now  that  he  did  not  mean  to  acknowledge  his 
failing,  and  knowing  the  secretiveness  of  the  drug- 
taker  she  decided  that  he  was  deluded  enough  to  think 
he  could  still  deceive  her. 

"Well,"  he  began  again,  with  an  attempt  at  jaunti- 
ness,  "I've  found  out  that  in  my  profession  it's  a  hard 
struggle  to  get  on  your  feet  again,  after  illness  or — or 
any  bad  set-back.  That's  the  reason  I  asked  you  to 
say  a  word  for  me.  It's  not  only  the  money,  though  I 
[  499  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

need  that  badly — I  want  to  get  back  my  self-respect. 
With  my  record  I  oughtn't  to  be  where  I  am — and  you 
can  speak  for  me  better  than  any  one." 

"Why  better  than  the  doctors  you've  worked  with  ?" 
Justine  put  the  question  abruptly,  looking  him  straight 
in  the  eyes. 

His  glance  dropped,  and  an  unpleasant  flush  rose  to 
his  thin  cheeks. 

"Well — as  it  happens,  you're  better  situated  than 
any  one  to  help  me  to  the  particular  thing  I  want." 

"The  particular  thing ?" 

"Yes.  I  understand  that  Mr.  Langhope  and  Mrs. 
Ansell  are  both  interested  in  the  new  wing  for  paying 
patients  at  Saint  Christopher's.  I  want  the  position  of 
house-physician  there,  and  I  know  you  can  get  it  for 
me." 

His  tone  changed  as  he  spoke,  till  with  the  last  words 
it  became  rough  and  almost  menacing. 

Justine  felt  her  colour  rise,  and  her  heart  began  to 
beat  confusedly.  Here  was  the  truth,  then:  she  could 
no  longer  be  the  dupe  of  her  own  compassion.  The 
man  knew  his  power  and  meant  to  use  it.  But  at  the 
thought  her  courage  was  in  arms. 

"I'm  sorry — but  it's  impossible,"  she  said. 

"  Impossible — why  ?  " 

She  continued  to  look  at  him  steadily.  "You  said 
just  now  that  you  wished  to  regain  your  self-respect. 
[  500  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Well,  you  must  regain  it  before  you  can  ask  me — or 
any  one  else — to  recommend  you  to  a  position  of 
trust." 

Wyant  half -rose,  with  an  angry  murmur.  "My 
self-respect  ?  What  do  you  mean  ?  /  meant  that  I'd 
lost  courage — through  ill-luck " 

"Yes;  and  your  ill-luck  has  come  through  your  own 
fault.  Till  you  cure  yourself  you're  not  fit  to  cure 
others." 

He  sank  back  into  his  seat,  glowering  at  her  under 
sullen  brows;  then  his  expression  gradually  changed 
to  half-sneering  admiration.  "You're  a  plucky  one!" 
he  said. 

Justine  repressed  a  movement  of  disgust.  "I  am 
very  sorry  for  you,"  she  said  gravely.  "I  saw  this 
trouble  coming  on  you  long  ago — and  if  there  is  any 
other  way  in  which  I  can  help  you " 

"Thanks,"  he  returned,  still  sneering.  "Your  sym- 
pathy is  very  precious — there  was  a  time  when  I  would 
have  given  my  soul  for  it.  But  that's  over,  and  I'm 
here  to  talk  business.  You  say  you  saw  my  trouble 
coming  on — did  it  ever  occur  to  you  that  you  were  the 
cause  of  it?" 

Justine  glanced  at  him  with  frank  contempt.  "No 
— for  I  was  not,"  she  replied. 

"That's  an  easy  way  out  of  it.  But  you  took  every- 
thing from  me — first  my  hope  of  marrying  you;  then 
[  501  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

my  chance  of  a  big  success  in  my  career;  and  I  was 
desperate — weak,  if  you  like — and  tried  to  deaden  my 
feelings  in  order  to  keep  up  my  pluck." 

Justine  rose  to  her  feet  with  a  movement  of  im- 
patience. "Every  word  you  say  proves  how  unfit  you 
are  to  assume  any  responsibility — to  do  anything  but 
try  to  recover  your  health.  If  I  can  help  you  to  that, 
I  am  still  willing  to  do  so." 

Wyant  rose  also,  moving  a  step  nearer.  "Well,  get 
me  that  place,  then — I'll  see  to  the  rest:  I'll  keep 
straight." 

"No — it's  impossible." 

"You  won't?" 

"I  can't,"  she  repeated  firmly. 

"And  you  expect  to  put  me  off  with  that  answer?" 

She  hesitated.  "Yes — if  there's  no  other  help  you'll 
accept." 

He  laughed  again — his  feeble  sneering  laugh  was  dis- 
gusting. "Oh,  I  don't  say  that.  I'd  like  to  earn  my 
living  honestly — funny  preference — but  if  you  cut  me 
off  from  that,  I  suppose  it's  only  fair  to  let  you  make 
up  for  it.  My  wife  and  child  have  got  to  live." 

"You  choose  a  strange  way  of  helping  them;  but  I 
will  do  what  I  can  if  you  will  go  for  a  while  to  some 
institution " 

He  broke  in  furiously.  "Institution  be  damned! 
You  can't  shuffle  me  out  of  the  way  like  that.  I'm  all 
[  502  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

right — good  food  is  what  I  need.     You  think  I've  got 
morphia  in  me — why,  it's  hunger!" 

Justine  heard  him  with  a  renewal  of  pity.  "Oh, 
I'm  sorry  for  you — very  sorry!  Why  do  you  try  to 
deceive  me?" 

"Why  do  you  deceive  me  ?  You  know  what  I  want 
and  you  know  you've  got  to  let  me  have  it.  If  you 
won't  give  me  a  line  to  one  of  your  friends  at  Saint 
Christopher's  you'll  have  to  give  me  another  cheque — 
that's  the  size  of  it." 

As  they  faced  each  other  in  silence  Justine's  pity 
gave  way  to  a  sudden  hatred  for  the  poor  creature  who 
stood  shivering  and  sneering  before  her. 

"You  choose  the  wrong  tone — and  I  think  our  talk 
has  lasted  long  enough,"  she  said,  stretching  her  hand 
to  the  bell. 

Wyant  did  not  move.  "Don't  ring — unless  you  want 
me  to  write  to  your  husband,"  he  rejoined. 

A  sick  feeling  of  helplessness  overcame  her;  but  she 
turned  on  him  firmly.  "I  pardoned  you  once  for  that 
threat!" 

"Yes — and  you  sent  me  some  money  the  next  day." 

"I  was  mistaken  enough  to  think  that,  in  your  dis- 
tress, you  had  not  realized  what  you  wrote.  But  if 
you're  a  systematic  blackmailer " 

"Gently — gently.     Bad  names  don't  frighten  me — 
it's  hunger  and  debt  I'm  afraid  of." 
[  503  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Justine  felt  a  last  tremor  of  compassion.  He  was 
abominable — but  he  was  pitiable  too. 

"I  will  really  help  you — I  will  see  your  wife  and 
do  what  I  can — but  I  can  give  you  no  money  today." 

"Why  not?" 

"Because  I  have  none.  I  am  not  as  rich  as  you 
think." 

He  smiled  incredulously.  "Give  me  a  line  to  Mr. 
Langhope,  then  " 

"No." 

He  sat  down  once  more,  leaning  back  with  a  weak 
assumption  of  ease.  "Perhaps  Mr.  Amherst  will  think 
differently." 

She  whitened,  but  said  steadily:  "Mr.  Amherst  is 
away." 

"Very  well — I  can  write." 

For  the  last  five  minutes  Justine  had  foreseen  this 
threat,  and  had  tried  to  force  her  mind  to  face  dis- 
passionately the  chances  it  involved.  After  all,  why 
not  let  him  write  to  Amherst?  The  very  vileness  of 
the  deed  must  rouse  an  indignation  which  would  be 
all  in  her  favour,  would  inevitably  dispose  her  husband 
to  readier  sympathy  with  the  motive  of  her  act,  as 
contrasted  with  the  base  insinuations  of  her  slanderer. 
It  seemed  impossible  that  Amherst  should  condemn 
her  when  his  condemnation  involved  the  fulfilling  of 
Wyant's  calculations:  a  reaction  of  scorn  would  throw 
[  504  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

him  into  unhesitating  championship  of  her  conduct. 
All  this  was  so  clear  that,  had  she  been  advising  any 
one  else,  her  confidence  in  the  course  to  be  taken  might 
have  strengthened  the  feeblest  will;  but  with  the  ques- 
tion lying  between  herself  and  Amherst — with  the  vision 
of  those  soiled  hands  literally  laid  on  the  spotless  fabric 
of  her  happiness,  judgment  wavered,  foresight  was  ob- 
scured— she  felt  tremulously  unable  to  face  the  steps 
between  exposure  and  vindication.  Her  final  conclu- 
sion was  that  she  must,  at  any  rate,  gain  time:  buy 
off  Wyant  till  she  had  been  able  to  tell  her  story  in  her 
own  way,  and  at  her  own  hour,  and  then  defy  him 
when  he  returned  to  the  assault.  The  idea  that  what- 
ever concession  she  made  would  be  only  provisional, 
helped  to  excuse  the  weakness  of  making  it,  and  ena- 
bled her  at  last,  without  too  painful  a  sense  of  falling 
below  her  own  standards,  to  reply  in  a  low  voice:  "If 
you'll  go  now,  I  will  send  you  something  next  week." 

But  Wyant  did  not  respond  as  readily  as  she  had 
expected.  He  merely  asked,  without  altering  his  in- 
solently easy  attitude:  "How  much?  Unless  it's  a 
good  deal,  I  prefer  the  letter." 

Oh,  why  could  she  not  cry  out-.  "Leave  the  house 
at  once — your  vulgar  threats  are  nothing  to  me" — 
Why  could  she  not  even  say  in  her  own  heart:  /  will 
tell  my  husband  tonigfU  ? 

"You're  afraid,"  said  Wyant,  as  if  answering  her 
[  505  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

thought.  "What's  the  use  of  being  afraid  when  you 
can  make  yourself  comfortable  so  easily  ?  You  called 
me  a  systematic  blackmailer — well,  I'm  not  that  yet. 
Give  me  a  thousand  and  you'll  see  the  last  of  me — on 
what  used  to  be  my  honour." 

Justine's  heart  sank.  She  had  reached  the  point  of 
being  ready  to  appeal  again  to  Amherst — but  on  what 
pretext  could  she  ask  for  such  a  sum  ? 

In  a  lifeless  voice  she  said :  "  I  could  not  possibly  get 
more  than  one  or  two  hundred." 

Wyant  scrutinized  her  a  moment:  her  despair  must 
have  rung  true  to  him.  "Well,  you  must  have  some- 
thing of  your  own — I  saw  your  jewelry  last  night  at 
the  theatre,"  he  said. 

So  it  had  been  he — and  he  had  sat  there  appraising 
her  value  like  a  murderer! 

"Jewelry — ?"  she  faltered. 

"You  had  a  thumping  big  sapphire — wasn't  it  ? — with 
diamonds  round  it." 

It  was  her  only  jewel — Amherst's  marriage  gift.  She 
would  have  preferred  a  less  valuable  present,  but  his 
mother  had  persuaded  her  to  accept  it,  saying  that  it 
was  the  bride's  duty  to  adorn  herself  for  the  bride- 
groom. 

"I  will  give  you  nothing — "  she  was  about  to  ex- 
claim; when  suddenly  her  eyes  fell  on  the  clock.  If 
Amherst  had  caught  the  two  o'clock  express  he  would 
[  506  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

be  at  the  house  within  the  hour;  and  the  only  thing 
that  seemed  of  consequence  now,  was  that  he  should 
not  meet  Wyant.  Supposing  she  still  found  courage 
to  refuse — there  was  no  knowing  how  long  the  humili- 
ating scene  might  be  prolonged:  and  she  must  be  rid 
of  the  creature  at  any  cost.  After  all,  she  seldom  wore 
the  sapphire — months  might  pass  without  its  absence 
being  noted  by  Amherst's  careless  eye;  and  if  Wyant 
should  pawn  it,  she  might  somehow  save  money  to  buy 
it  back  before  it  was  missed.  She  went  through  these 
calculations  with  feverish  rapidity;  then  she  turned 
again  to  Wyant. 

"You  won't  come  back — ever?" 

"I  swear  I  won't,"  he  said. 

He  moved  away  toward  the  window,  as  if  to  spare 
her;  and  she  turned  and  slowly  left  the  room. 

She  never  forgot  the  moments  that  followed.  Once 
outside  the  door  she  was  in  such  haste  that  she  stum- 
bled on  the  stairs,  and  had  to  pause  on  the  landing  to 
regain  her  breath.  In  her  room  she  found  one  of  the 
housemaids  busy,  and  at  first  could  think  of  no  pretext 
for  dismissing  her.  Then  she  bade  the  woman  go 
down  and  send  the  brougham  away,  telling  the  coach- 
man to  call  for  Miss  Cicely  at  six. 

Left  alone,  she  bolted  the  door,  and  as  if  with  a 
thief's  hand,  opened  her  wardrobe,  unlocked  her  jewel- 
box,  and  drew  out  the  sapphire  in  its  flat  morocco  case 
[  507  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

She  restored  the  box  to  its  place,  the  key  to  its  ring — 
then  she  opened  the  case  and  looked  at  the  sapphire. 
As  she  did  so,  a  little  tremor  ran  over  her  neck  and 
throat,  and  closing  her  eyes  she  felt  her  husband's  kiss, 
and  the  touch  of  his  hands  as  he  fastened  on  the  jewel. 

She  unbolted  the  door,  listened  intently  on  the  land- 
ing, and  then  went  slowly  down  the  stairs.  None  of 
the  servants  were  in  sight,  yet  as  she  reached  the  lower 
hall  she  was  conscious  that  the  air  had  grown  suddenly 
colder,  as  though  the  outer  door  had  just  been  opened. 
She  paused,  and  listened  again.  There  was  a  sound 
of  talking  in  the  drawing-room.  Could  it  be  that  in 
her  absence  a  visitor  had  been  admitted  ?  The  possi- 
bility frightened  her  at  first — then  she  welcomed  it  as 
an  unexpected  means  of  ridding  herself  of  her  tor- 
mentor. 

She  opened  the  drawing-room  door,  and  saw  her 
husband  talking  with  Wyant. 

XXXV 

A  MHERST,  his  back  to  the  threshold,  sat  at  a 
2\.  table  writing:  Wyant  stood  a  few  feet  away, 
staring  down  at  the  fire. 

Neither  had  heard  the  door  open;  and  before  they 
were  aware  of  her  entrance  Justine  had  calculated  that 
she  must  have  been  away  for  at  least  five  minutes,  and 
[  508  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

that  in  that  space  of  time  almost  anything  might  have 
passed  between  them. 

For  a  moment  the  power  of  connected  thought  left 
her;  then  her  heart  gave  a  bound  of  relief.  She  said  to 
herself  that  Wyant  had  doubtless  made  some  allusion 
to  his  situation,  and  that  her  husband,  conscious  only 
of  a  great  debt  of  gratitude,  had  at  once  sat  down  to 
draw  a  cheque  for  him.  The  idea  was  so  reassuring 
that  it  restored  all  her  clearness  of  thought. 

Wyant  was  the  first  to  see  her.  He  made  an  abrupt 
movement,  and  Amherst,  rising,  turned  and  put  an 
envelope  in  his  hand. 

"There,  my  dear  fellow " 

As  he  turned  he  caught  sight  of  his  wife. 

"I  caught  the  twelve  o'clock  train  after  all — you  got 
my  second  wire?"  he  asked. 

"No,"  she  faltered,  pressing  her  left  hand,  with  the 
little  case  in  it,  close  to  the  folds  of  her  dress. 

"I  was  afraid  not.  There  was  a  bad  storm  at  Hana- 
ford,  and  they  said  there  might  be  a  delay." 

At  the  same  moment  she  found  Wyant  advancing 
with  extended  hand,  and  understood  that  he  had  con- 
cealed the  fact  of  having  already  seen  her.  She  ac- 
cepted the  cue,  and  shook  his  hand,  murmuring: 
"How  do  you  do?" 

Amherst  looked  at  her,  perhaps  struck  by  her  manner. 

"You  have  not  seen  Dr.  Wyant  since  Lynbrook?" 
[  509  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"No,"  she  answered,  thankful  to  have  this  pretext 
for  her  emotion. 

"  I  have  been  telling  him  that  he  should  not  have  left 
us  so  long  without  news — especially  as  he  has  been  ill, 
and  things  have  gone  rather  badly  with  him.  But  I 
hope  we  can  help  now.  He  has  heard  that  Saint  Chris- 
topher's is  looking  for  a  house-physician  for  the  pay- 
ing patients'  wing,  and  as  Mr.  Langhope  is  away  I  have 
given  him  a  line  to  Mrs.  Ansell." 

"Extremely  kind  of  you,"  Wyant  murmured,  pass- 
ing his  hand  over  his  forehead. 

Justine  stood  silent.  She  wondered  that  her  hus- 
band had  not  noticed  that  tremulous  degraded  hand. 
But  he  was  always  so  blind  to  externals — and  he  had 
no  medical  experience  to  sharpen  his  perceptions. 

Suddenly  she  felt  impelled  to  speak  "I  am  sorry 
Dr.  Wyant  has  been — unfortunate.  Of  course  you 
will  want  to  do  everything  to  help  him;  but  would  it  not 
be  better  to  wait  till  Mr.  Langhope  comes  back?" 

"Wyant  thinks  the  delay  might  make  him  lose  the 
place.  It  seems  the  board  meets  tomorrow.  And  Mrs. 
Ansell  really  knows  much  more  about  it.  Isn't  she  the 
secretary  of  the  ladies'  committee?" 

"I'm  not  sure — I  believe  so.  But  surely  Mr.  Lang- 
hope  should  be  consulted." 

She  felt  Wyant's  face  change :  his  eyes  settled  on  her 
in  a  threatening  stare. 

[510] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Amherst  looked  at  her  also,  and  there  was  surprise 
in  his  glance.  "I  think  I  can  answer  for  my  father- 
in-law.  He  feels  as  strongly  as  I'  do  how  much  we  all 
owe  to  Dr.  Wyant." 

He  seldom  spoke  of  Mr.  Langhope  as  his  father-in- 
law,  and  the  chance  designation  seemed  to  mark  a 
closer  tie  between  them,  to  exclude  Justine  from  what 
was  after  all  a  family  affair.  For  a  moment  she  felt 
tempted  to  accept  the  suggestion,  and  let  the  responsi- 
bility fall  where  it  would.  But  it  would  fall  on  Am- 
herst— and  that  was  intolerable. 

"I  think  you  ought  to  wait,"  she  insisted. 

An  embarrassed  silence  settled  on  the  three. 

Wyant  broke  it  by  advancing  toward  Amherst.  "I 
shall  never  forget  your  kindness,"  he  said;  "and  I  hope 
to  prove  to  Mrs.  Amherst  that  it's  not  misplaced." 

The  words  were  well  chosen,  and  "well  spoken; 
Justine  saw  that  they  produced  a  good  effect.  Amherst 
grasped  the  physician's  hand  with  a  smile.  "My  dear 
fellow,  I  wish  I  could  do  more.  Be  sure  to  call  on  me 
again  if  you  want  help." 

"Oh,  you've  put  me  on  my  feet,"  said  Wyant  grate- 
fully. 

He  bowed  slightly  to  Justine  and  turned  to  go;  but 
as  he  reached  the  threshold  she  moved  after  him. 

"Dr.  Wyant — you  must  give  back  that  letter." 

He  stopped  short  with  a  whitening  face. 
[511] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

She  felt  Amherst's  eyes  on  her  again;  and  she  said 
desperately,  addressing  him:  "Dr.  Wyant  understands 
my  reasons." 

Her  husband's  glance  turned  abruptly  to  Wyant. 
"Do  you?"  he  asked  after  a  pause. 

Wyant  looked  from  one  to  the  other.  The  moisture 
came  out  on  his  forehead,  and  he  passed  his  hand  ovef 
it  again.  "Yes,"  he  said  in  a  dry  voice.  "Mrs.  Am- 
herst  wants  me  farther  off — out  of  New  York." 

"Out  of  New  York  ?     What  do  you  mean  ?" 

Justine  interposed  hastily,  before  the  answer  could 
come.  "It  is  because  Dr.  Wyant  is  not  in  condition 
— for  such  a  place — just  at  present." 

"But  he  assures  me  he  is  quite  well." 

There  was  another  silence;  and  again  Wyant  broke 
in,  this  time  with  a  slight  laugh.  "I  can  explain  what 
Mrs.  Amherst  means;  she  intends  to  accuse  me  of  the 
morphine  habit.  And  I  can  explain  her  reason  for 
doing  so — she  wants  me  out  of  the  way." 

Amherst  turned  on  the  speaker;  and,  as  she  had  fore- 
seen, his  look  was  terrible.  "You  haven't  explained 
that  yet,"  he  said. 

"Well — I  can."  Wyant  waited  another  moment. 
"I  know  too  much  about  her,"  he  declared. 

There  was  a  low  exclamation  from  Justine,  and  Am- 
herst strode  toward  Wyant.  "You  infernal  black- 
guard!" he  cried. 

[512] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Oh,  gently "  Wyant  muttered,  flinching  back 

from  his  outstretched  arm. 

"My  wife's  wish  is  sufficient.  Give  me  back  that 
letter." 

Wyant  straightened  himself.  "  No,  by  God,  I  won't ! " 
he  retorted  furiously.  "I  didn't  ask  you  for  it  till  you 
offered  to  help  me;  but  I  won't  let  it  be  taken  back 
without  a  word,  like  a  thief  that  you'd  caught  with  your 
umbrella.  If  your  wife  won't  explain  I  will.  She's 
afraid  I'll  talk  about  what  happened  at  Lynbrook." 

Amherst's  arm  fell  to  his  side.     "At  Lynbrook?" 

Behind  him  there  was  a  sound  of  inarticulate  appeal 
— but  he  took  no  notice. 

"Yes.  It's  she  who  used  morphia — but  not  on  her- 
self. She  gives  it  to  other  people.  She  gave  an  over- 
dose to  Mrs.  Amherst." 

Amherst  looked  at  him  confusedly.     "  An  overdose  ?  " 

"Yes — purposely,  I  mean.  And  I  came  into  the 
room  at  the  wrong  time.  I  can  prove  that  Mrs.  Am- 
herst died  of  morphia-poisoning." 

"John!"  Justine  gasped  out,  pressing  between  them. 

Amherst  gently  put  aside  the  hand  with  which  she 
had  caught  his  arm.  "Wait  a  moment:  this  can't  rest 
here.  You  can't  want  it  to,"  he  said  to  her  in  an  under- 
tone. 

"Why  do  you  care.  .  .  for  what  he  says.  .  .  when  I 
don't?"  she  breathed  back  with  trembling  lips. 
[  513] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"You  can  see  I  am  not  wanted  here,"  Wyant  threw 
in  with  a  sneer. 

Amherst  remained  silent  for  a  brief  space;  then  he 
turned  his  eyes  once  more  to  his  wife. 

Justine  lifted  her  face:  it  looked  small  and  spent, 
like  an  extinguished  taper. 

"It's  true,"  she  said. 

"True?" 

"I  did  give.  .  .  an  overdose.  .  .  intentionally,  when 
I  knew  there  was  no  hope,  and  when  the  surgeons  said 
she  might  go  on  suffering.  She  was  very  strong.  .  . 
and  I  couldn't  bear  it.  .  .  you  couldn't  have  borne 
it.  .  ." 

There  was  another  silence;  then  she  went  on  in  a 
stronger  voice,  looking  straight  at  her  husband:  "And 
now  will  you  send  this  man  away?" 

Amherst  glanced  at  Wyant  without  moving.  "Go," 
he  said  curtly. 

Wyant,  instead,  moved  a  step  nearer.  "Just  a 
minute,  please.  It's  only  fair  to  hear  my  side.  Your 
wife  says  there  was  no  hope;  yet  the  day  before  she.  .  . 
gave  the  dose,  Dr.  Garford  told  her  in  my  presence  that 
Mrs.  Amherst  might  live." 

Again  Amherst's  eyes  addressed  themselves  slowly 
to  Justine;  and  she  forced  her  lips  to  articulate  an 
answer. 

"Dr.  Garford  said.  .  .  one  could  never  tell.  .  .  but 
[514] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

I  know  he  didn't  believe  in  the  chance  of  recovery.  .  * 
no  one  did." 

"Dr.  Garford  is  dead,"  said  Wyant  grimly. 

Amherst  strode  up  to  him  again.  "You  scoundrel 
— leave  the  house!"  he  commanded. 

But  still  Wyant  sneeringly  stood  his  ground.  "Not 
till  I've  finished,  I  can't  afford  to  let  myself  be  kicked 
out  like  a  dog  because  I  happen  to  be  in  the  way. 
Every  doctor  knows  that  in  cases  of  spinal  lesion  re- 
covery is  becoming  more  and  more  frequent — if  the 
patient  survives  the  third  week  there's  every  reason  to 
hope.  Those  are  the  facts  as  they  would  appear  to 
any  surgeon.  If  they're  not  true,  why  is  Mrs.  Amherst 
afraid  of  having  them  stated  ?  Why  has  she  been  pay- 
ing me  for  nearly  a  year  to  keep  them  quiet?" 

"Oh "  Justine  moaned. 

"I  never  thought  of  talking  till  luck  went  against 
me.  Then  I  asked  her  for  help — and  reminded  her  of 
certain  things.  After  that  she  kept  me  supplied  pretty 
regularly."  He  thrust  his  shaking  hand  into  an  in- 
ner pocket.  "Here  are  her  envelopes.  .  .  Quebec.  .  . 
Montreal.  .  .  Saranac.  .  .  I  know  just  where  you  went 
on  your  honeymoon.  She  had  to  write  often,  because 
the  sums  were  small.  Why  did  she  do  it,  if  she  wasn't 
afraid  ?  And  why  did  she  go  upstairs  just  now  to  fetch 
me  something  ?  If  you  don't  believe  me,  ask  her  what 
she's  got  in  her  hand." 

[515] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Amherst  did  not  heed  this  injunction.  He  stood 
motionless,  gripping  the  back  of  a  chair,  as  if  his  next 
gesture  might  be  to  lift  and  hurl  it  at  the  speaker. 

"Ask  her —      "  Wyant  repeated. 

Amherst  turned  his  head  slowly,  and  his  dull  gaze 
rested  on  his  wife.  His  face  looked  years  older — lips 
and  eyes  moved  as  heavily  as  an  old  man's. 

As  he  looked  at  her,  Justine  came  forward  without 
speaking,  and  laid  the  little  morocco  case  in  his  hand. 
He  held  it  there  a  moment,  as  if  hardly  understanding 
her  action — then  he  tossed  it  on  the  table  at  his  elbow, 
and  walked  up  to  Wyant. 

"You  hound,"  he  said— "now  go!" 

XXXVI 

WHEN  Wyant  had  left  the  room,  and  the  house- 
door  had  closed  on  him,  Amherst  spoke  to  his 
wife. 

"Come  upstairs,"  he  said. 

Justine  followed  him,  scarcely  conscious  where  she 
went,  but  moving  already  with  a  lighter  tread.  Part 
of  her  weight  of  misery  had  been  lifted  with  Wyant's 
going.  She  had  suffered  less  from  the  fear  of  what  her 
husband  might  think  than  from  the  shame  of  making 
her  avowal  in  her  defamer's  presence.  And  her  faith 
in  Amherst's  comprehension  had  begun  to  revive.  He 
[516] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

had  dismissed  Wyant  with  scorn  and  horror — did  not 
that  show  that  he  was  on  her  side  already  ?  And  how 
many  more  arguments  she  had  at  her  call!  Her 
brain  hummed  with  them  as  she  followed  him  up  the 
stairs. 

In  her  bedroom  he  closed  the  door  and  stood  mo- 
tionless, the  same  heavy  half -paralyzed  look  on  his  face. 
It  frightened  her  and  she  went  up  to  him. 

"John!"  she  said  timidly. 

He  put  his  hand  to  his  head.     "Wait  a  moment " 

he  returned;  and  she  waited,  her  heart  slowly  sinking 
again. 

The  moment  over,  he  seemed  to  recover  his  power  of 
movement.  He  crossed  the  room  and  threw  himself 
into  the  armchair  near  the  hearth. 

"Now  tell  me  everything." 

He  sat  thrown  back,  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  fire,  and 
the  vertical  lines  between  his  brows  forming  a  deep 
scar  in  his  white  face. 

Justine  moved  nearer,  and  touched  his  arm  be- 
seechingly. "Won't  you  look  at  me?" 

He  turned  his  head  slowly,  as  if  with  an  effort,  and 
his  eyes  rested  reluctantly  on  hers. 

"Oh,  not  like  that!"  she  exclaimed. 

He  seemed  to  make  a  stronger  effort  at  self-control. 
''Please  don't  heed  me — but  say  what  there  is  to  say," 
he  said  in  a  level  voice,  his  gaze  on  the  fire. 
[517] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

She  stood  before  him,  her  arms  hanging  down,  her 
clasped  fingers  twisting  restlessly. 

"I  don't  know  that  there  is  much  to  say — beyond 
what  I've  told  you." 

There  was  a  slight  sound  in  Amherst's  throat,  like 
the  ghost  of  a  derisive  laugh.  After  another  interval 
he  said:  "I  wish  to  hear  exactly  what  happened." 

She  seated  herself  on  the  edge  of  a  chair  near  by, 
bending  forward,  with  hands  interlocked  and  arms  ex- 
tended on  her  knees — every  line  reaching  out  to  him, 
as  though  her  whole  slight  body  were  an  arrow  winged 
with  pleadings.  It  was  a  relief  to  speak  at  last,  even 
face  to  face  with  the  stony  image  that  sat  in  her  hus- 
band's place;  and  she  told  her  story,  detail  by  detail, 
omitting  nothing,  exaggerating  nothing,  speaking  slowly, 
clearly,  with  precision,  aware  that  the  bare  facts  were 
her  strongest  argument. 

Amherst,  as  he  listened,  shifted  his  position  once, 
raising  his  hand  so  that  it  screened  his  face;  and  in  that 
attitude  he  remained  when  she  had  ended. 

As  she  waited  for  him  to  speak,  Justine  realized  that 
her  heart  had  been  alive  with  tremulous  hopes.  All 
through  her  narrative  she  had  counted  on  a  murmur  of 
perception,  an  exclamation  of  pity:  she  had  felt  sure  of 
melting  the  stony  image.  But  Amherst  said  no  word. 

At  length  he  spoke,  still  without  turning  his  head. 
"You  have  not  told  me  why  you  kept  this  from  me." 
[518  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

A  sob  formed  in  her  throat,  and  she  had  to  wait  to 
steady  her  voice. 

"No — that  was  my  wrong — my  weakness.  When  I 
did  it  I  never  thought  of  being  afraid  to  tell  you — I  had 
talked  it  over  with  you  in  my  own  mind.  .  .  so  often 
.  .  .  before.  .  ." 

"Well?" 

"Then — when  you  came  back  it  was  harder.  .  . 
though  I  was  still  sure  you  would  approve  me." 

"Why  harder?" 

"Because  at  first — at  Lynbrook — I  could  not  tell  it 
all  over,  in  detail,  as  I  have  now.  .  .  it  was  beyond 
human  power.  .  .  and  without  doing  so,  I  couldn't 
make  it  all  clear  to  you.  .  .  and  so  should  only  have 
added  to  your  pain.  If  you  had  been  there  you  would 
have  done  as  I  did.  .  .  I  felt  sure  of  that  from  the  first. 
But  coming  afterward,  you  couldn't  judge.  .  .  no  one 
who  was  not  there  could  judge.  .  .  and  I  wanted  to 
spare  you.  .  ." 

"And  afterward?" 

She  had  shrunk  in  advance  from  this  question,  and 
she  could  not  answer  it  at  once.  To  gain  time  she 
echoed  it.  "Afterward  ? " 

"Did  it  never  occur  to  you,  when  we  met  later — 
when  you  first  went  to  Mr.  Langhope "? 

"To  tell  you  then  ?  No — because  by  that  time  I  had 
come  to  see  that  I  could  never  be  quite  sure  of  making 
[  519  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

you  understand.  No  one  who  was  not  there  at  the 
time  could  know  what  it  was  to  see  her  suffer." 

"You  thought  it  all  over,  then — decided  definitely 
against  telling  me?" 

"I  did  not  have  to  think  long.  I  felt  I  had  done  right 
— I  still  feel  so — and  I  was  sure  you  would  feel  so,  if  you 
were  in  the  same  circumstances." 

There  was  another  pause.  Then  Amherst  said: 
"And  last  September — at  Hanaford?" 

It  was  the  word  for  which  she  had  waited — the  word 
of  her  inmost  fears.  She  felt  the  blood  mount  to  her 
face. 

"Did  you  see  no  difference — no  special  reason  for 
telling  me  then?" 

"Yes "  she  faltered. 

"Yet  you  said  nothing." 

"No." 

Silence  again.  Her  eyes  strayed  to  the  clock,  and 
some  dim  association  of  ideas  told  her  that  Cicely  would 
soon  be  coming  in. 

"Why  did  you  say  nothing?" 

He  lowered  his  hand  and  turned  toward  her  as  he 
spoke;  and  she  looked  up  and  faced  him. 

"Because  I  regarded  the  question  as  settled.     I  had 

decided  it  in  my  own  mind  months  before,  and  had 

never  regretted  my  decision.     I  should  have  thought  it 

morbid.  .  .  unnatural.  .  .  to  go  over  the  whole  subject 

[  520  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

again.  .  .  to  let  it  affect  a  situation  that  had  come  about 
...  so  much  later.  .  .  so  unexpectedly." 

"Did  you  never  feel  that,  later,  if  I  came  to  know — 
if  others  came  to  know — it  might  be  difficult ?" 

"No;  for  I  didn't  care  for  the  others — and  I  believed 
that,  whatever  your  own  feelings  were,  you  would  know 
I  had  done  what  I  thought  right." 

She  spoke  the  words  proudly,  strongly,  and  for  the 
first  time  the  hard  lines  of  his  face  relaxed,  and  a  slight 
tremor  crossed  it. 

"If  you  believed  this,  why  have  you  been  letting  that 
cur  blackmail  you?" 

"  Because  when  he  began  I  saw  for  the  first  time  that 
what  I  had  done  might  be  turned  against  me  by — by 
those  who  disliked  our  marriage.  And  I  was  afraid 
for  my  happiness.  That  was  my  weakness.  .  .  it  is 
what  I  am  suffering  for  now." 

"Suffering!"  he  echoed  ironically,  as  though  she  had 
presumed  to  apply  to  herself  a  word  of  which  he  had 
the  grim  monopoly.  He  rose  and  took  a  few  aimless 
steps;  then  he  halted  before  her. 

"That  day — last  month — when  you  asked  me  for 
money.  .  .  was  it.  .  .  ?" 

"Yes "  she  said,  her  head  sinking. 

He  laughed.  "You  couldn't  tell  me — but  you  could 
use  my  money  to  bribe  that  fellow  to  conspire  with 


you!1 


[521  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I  had  none  of  my  own." 

"No — nor  I  either!  You  used  her  money. — God!" 
he  groaned,  turning  away  with  clenched  hands. 

Justine  had  risen  also,  and  she  stood  motionless, 
her  hands  clasped  against  her  breast,  in  the  drawn 
shrinking  attitude  of  a  fugitive  overtaken  by  a  blinding 
storm.  He  moved  back  to  her  with  an  appealing  gest- 
ure. 

"And  you  didn't  see — it  didn't  occur  to  you — that 
your  doing.  .  .  as  you  did.  .  .  was  an  obstacle — an  in- 
surmountable obstacle — to  our  ever.  .  .  ?" 

She  cut  him  short  with  an  indignant  cry.  "No! 
No!  for  it  was  not.  How  could  it  have  anything  to  do 
with  what.  .  .  came  after.  .  .  with  you  or  me  ?  I  did 
it  only  for  Bessy — it  concerned  only  Bessy!" 

"Ah,  don't  name  her!"  broke  from  him  harshly,  and 
she  drew  back,  cut  to  the  heart. 

There  was  another  pause,  during  which  he  seemed 
to  fall  into  a  kind  of  dazed  irresolution,  his  head  on 
his  breast,  as  though  unconscious  of  her  presence. 
Then  he  roused  himself  and  went  to  the  door. 

As  he  passed  her  she  sprang  after  him.  "John — 
John!  Is  that  all  you  have  to  say?" 

"What  more  is  there?" 

"What  more?  Everything! — What  right  have  you 
to  turn  from  me  as  if  I  were  a  murderess  ?  I  did  noth- 
ing but  what  your  own  reason,  your  own  arguments, 
[522] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

have  justified  a  hundred  times!  I  made  a  mistake  in 
not  telling  you  at  once — but  a  mistake  is  not  a  crime. 
It  can't  be  your  real  feeling  that  turns  you  from  me — 
it  must  be  the  dread  of  what  other  people  would  think! 
But  when  have  you  cared  for  what  other  people  thought  ? 
When  have  your  own  actions  been  governed  by  it?" 

He  moved  another  step  without  speaking,  and  she 
caught  him  by  the  arm.  "No!  you  sha'n't  go — not 
like  that!— Wait!" 

She  turned  and  crossed  the  room.  On  the  lower 
shelf  of  the  little  table  by  her  bed  a  few  books  were 
ranged :  she  stooped  and  drew  one  hurriedly  forth,  open- 
ing it  at  the  fly-leaf  as  she  went  back  to  Amherst. 

"There — read  that.  The  book  was  at  Lynbrook — 
in  your  room — and  I  came  across  it  by  chance  the  very 
day.  .  ." 

It  was  the  little  volume  of  Bacon  which  she  was 
thrusting  at  him.  He  took  it  with  a  bewildered  look, 
as  if  scarcely  following  what  she  said. 

"Read  it — read  it!"  she  commanded;  and  mechan- 
ically he  read  out  the  words  he  had  written. 

"La  vraie  morale  se  moque  de  la  morale.  .  .  We  perish 
because  we  follow  other  men's  examples.  .  .  Socrates 
called  the  opinions  of  the  many  Lamiae. — Good  God!" 
he  exclaimed,  flinging  the  book  from  him  with  a  gest- 
ure of  abhorrence. 

Justine  watched  him  with  panting  lips,  her  knees 
[  523  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

trembling  under  her.  "But  you  wrote  it — you  wrote 
it!  I  thought  you  meant  it!"  she  cried,  as  the  book 
spun  across  a  table  and  dropped  to  the  floor. 

He  looked  at  her  coldly,  almost  apprehensively,  as 
if  she  had  grown  suddenly  dangerous  and  remote;  then 
he  turned  and  walked  out  of  the  room. 

The  striking  of  the  clock  roused  her.  She  rose  to  her 
feet,  rang  the  bell,  and  told  the  maid,  through  the  door, 
that  she  had  a  headache,  and  was  unable  to  see  Miss 
Cicely.  Then  she  turned  back  into  the  room,  and 
darkness  closed  on  her.  She  was  not  the  kind  to  take 
grief  passively — it  drove  her  in  anguished  pacings  up 
and  down  the  floor.  She  walked  and  walked  till  her 
legs  flagged  under  her;  then  she  dropped  stupidly  into 
the  chair  where  Amherst  had  sat.  .  . 

All  her  world  had  crumbled  about  her.  It  was  as  if 
some  law  of  mental  gravity  had  been  mysteriouly  sus- 
pended, and  every  firmly-anchored  conviction,  every 
accepted  process  of  reasoning,  spun  disconnectedly 
through  space.  Amherst  had  not  understood  her — 
worse  still,  he  had  judged  her  as  the  world  might  judge 
her!  The  core  of  her  misery  was  there.  With  terrible 
clearness  she  saw  the  suspicion  that  had  crossed  his 
mind — the  suspicion  that  she  had  kept  silence  in  the 
beginning  because  she  loved  him,  and  feared  to  lose 
him  if  she  spoke. 

[524] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

And  what  if  it  were  true  ?  What  if  her  unconscious 
guilt  went  back  even  farther  than  his  thought  dared  to 
track  it?  She  could  not  now  recall  a  time  when  she 
had  not  loved  him.  Every  chance  meeting  with  him, 
from  their  first  brief  talk  at  Hanaford,  stood  out  em- 
bossed and  glowing  against  the  blur  of  lesser  memor- 
ies. Was  it  possible  that  she  had  loved  him  during 
Bessy's  life — that  she  had  even,  sub-consciously,  blindly, 
been  urged  by  her  feeling  for  him  to  perform  the  act  ? 

But  she  shook  herself  free  from  this  morbid  horror--- 
the  rebound  of  health  was  always  prompt  in  her,  and 
her  mind  instinctively  rejected  every  form  of  moral 
poison.  No!  Her  motive  had  been  normal,  sane  and 
justifiable — completely  justifiable.  Her  fault  lay  in 
having  dared  to  rise  above  conventional  restrictions, 
her  mistake  in  believing  that  her  husband  could  rise 
with  her.  These  reflections  steadied  her  but  they  did 
not  bring  much  comfort.  For  her  whole  life  was  cen- 
tred in  Amherst,  and  she  saw  that  he  would  never  be 
able  to  free  himself  from  the  traditional  view  of  her  act. 
In  looking  back,  and  correcting  her  survey  of  his  char- 
acter in  the  revealing  light  of  the  last  hours,  she  per- 
ceived that,  like  many  men  of  emancipated  thought, 
he  had  remained  subject  to  the  old  conventions  of  feel- 
ing. And  he  had  probably  never  given  much  thought 
to  women  till  he  met  her — had  always  been  content  to 
deal  with  them  in  the  accepted  currency  of  sentiment. 
[  525  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

After  all,  it  was  the  currency  they  liked  best,  and  for 
which  they  offered  their  prettiest  wares! 

But  what  of  the  intellectual  accord  between  himself 
and  her?  She  had  not  been  deceived  in  that!  He 
and  she  had  really  been  wedded  in  mind  as  well  as  in 
heart.  But  until  now  there  had  not  arisen  in  their 
lives  one  of  those  searching  questions  which  call  into 
play  emotions  rooted  far  below  reason  and  judgment,  in 
the  dark  primal  depths  of  inherited  feeling.  It  is  easy 
to  judge  impersonal  problems  intellectually,  turning 
on  them  the  full  light  of  acquired  knowledge;  but  too 
often  one  must  still  grope  one's  way  through  the  per- 
sonal difficulty  by  the  dim  taper  carried  in  long-dead 
hands.  .  . 

But  was  there  then  no  hope  of  lifting  one's  individual 
life  to  a  clearer  height  of  conduct  ?  Must  one  be  con- 
tent to  think  for  the  race,  and  to  feel  only — feel  blindly 
and  incoherently — for  one's  self  ?  And  was  it  not  from 
such  natures  as  Amherst's — natures  in  which  independ- 
ence of  judgment  was  blent  with  strong  human  sympathy 
— that  the  liberating  impulse  should  come? 

Her  mind  grew  weary  of  revolving  in  this  vain  circle 
of  questions.  The  fact  was  that,  in  their  particular 
case,  Amherst  had  not  risen  above  prejudice  and  emo- 
tion; that,  though  her  act  was  one  to  which  his  intel- 
lectual sanction  was  given,  he  had  turned  from  her  with 
instinctive  repugnance,  had  dishonoured  her  by  the 
[526] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

most  wounding  suspicions.  The  tie  between  them  was 
forever  stained  and  debased. 

Justine's  long  hospital-discipline  made  it  impossible 
for  her  to  lose  consciousness  of  the  lapse  of  time,  or  to 
let  her  misery  thicken  into  mental  stupor.  She  could 
not  help  thinking  and  moving;  and  she  presently  lifted 
herself  to  her  feet,  turned  on  the  light,  and  began  to 
prepare  for  dinner.  It  would  be  terrible  to  face  her 
husband  across  Mr.  Langhope's  pretty  dinner-table, 
and  afterward  in  the  charming  drawing-room,  with  its 
delicate  old  ornaments  and  intimate  luxurious  furniture; 
but  she  could  not  continue  to  sit  motionless  in  the  dark : 
it  was  her  innermost  instinct  to  pick  herself  up  and  go 
on. 

While  she  dressed  she  listened  anxiously  for  Am- 
herst's  step  in  the  next  room;  but  there  was  no  sound, 
and  when  she  dragged  herself  downstairs  the  drawing- 
room  was  empty,  and  the  parlour-maid,  after  a  decent 
delay,  came  to  ask  if  dinner  should  be  postponed. 

She  said  no,  murmuring  some  vague  pretext  for  her 
husband's  absence,  and  sitting  alone  through  the  suc- 
cession of  courses  which  composed  the  brief  but  care- 
fully-studied menu.  When  this  ordeal  was  over  she 
returned  to  the  drawing-room  and  took  up  a  book. 
It  chanced  to  be  a  new  volume  on  labour  problems, 
which  Amherst  must  have  brought  back  with  him  from 
Westmore;  and  it  carried  her  thoughts  instantly  to  the 
[  527] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

mills.  Would  this  disaster  poison  their  work  there 
as  well  as  their  personal  relation?  Would  he  think 
of  her  as  carrying  contamination  even  into  the  task  their 
love  had  illumined  ? 

The  hours  went  on  without  his  returning,  and  at 
length  it  occurred  to  her  that  he  might  have  taken  the 
night  train  to  Hanaford.  Her  heart  contracted  at  the 
thought:  she  remembered — though  every  nerve  shrank 
from  the  analogy — his  sudden  flight  at  another  crisis 
in  his  life,  and  she  felt  obscurely  that  if  he  escaped  from 
her  now  she  would  never  recover  her  hold  on  him.  But 
could  he  be  so  cruel — could  he  wish  any  one  to  suffer 
as  she  was  suffering? 

At  ten  o'clock  she  could  endure  the  drawing-room 
no  longer,  and  went  up  to  her  room  again.  She  un- 
dressed slowly,  trying  to  prolong  the  process  as  much  as 
possible,  to  put  off  the  period  of  silence  and  inaction 
which  would  close  in  on  her  when  she  lay  down  on  her 
bed.  But  at  length  the  dreaded  moment  came — there 
was  nothing  more  between  her  and  the  night.  She 
crept  into  bed  and  put  out  the  light;  but  as  she  slipped 
between  the  cold  sheets  a  trembling  seized  her,  and  after 
a  moment  she  drew  on  her  dressing-gown  again  and 
groped  her  way  to  the  lounge  by  the  fire. 

She  pushed  the  lounge  closer  to  the  hearth  and  lay 
down,  still  shivering,  though  she  had  drawn  the  quilted 
coverlet  up  to  her  chin.  She  lay  there  a  long  time, 
C  528  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

with  closed  eyes,  in  a  mental  darkness  torn  by  sudden 
flashes  of  memory.  In  one  of  these  flashes  a  phrase  of 
Amherst's  stood  out — a  word  spoken  at  Westmore,  on 
the  day  of  the  opening  of  the  Emergency  Hospital,  about 
a  good-looking  young  man  who  had  called  to  see  her. 
She  remembered  Amherst's  boyish  burst  of  jealousy, 
his  sudden  relief  at  the  thought  that  the  visitor  might 
have  been  Wyant.  And  no  doubt  it  was  Wyant — 
Wyant  who  had  come  to  Hanaford  to  threaten  her,  and 
who,  baffled  by  her  non-arrival,  or  for  some  other  un- 
explained reason,  had  left  again  without  carrying  out 
his  purpose. 

It  was  dreadful  to  think  by  how  slight  a  chance  her 
first  draught  of  happiness  had  escaped  that  drop  of 
poison;  yet,  when  she  understood,  her  inward  cry  was: 
"If  it  had  happened,  my  dearest  need  not  have  suf- 
fered!". .  .  Already  she  was  feeling  Amherst's  pain 
more  than  her  own,  understanding  that  it  was  harder 
to  bear  than  hers  because  it  was  at  war  with  all  the 
reflective  part  of  his  nature. 

As  she  lay  there,  her  face  pressed  into  the  cushions, 
she  heard  a  sound  through  the  silent  house — the  open- 
ing and  closing  of  the  outer  door.  She  turned  cold,* 
and  lay  listening  with  strained  ears.  .  .  Yes;  now  there 
was  a  step  on  the  stairs — her  husband's  step!  She 
heard  him  turn  into  his  own  room.  The  throbs  of  her 
heart  almost  deafened  her — she  only  distinguished 
[  529  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

confusedly  that  he  was  moving  about  within,  so  close 
that  it  was  as  if  she  felt  his  touch.  Then  her  door 
opened  and  he  entered. 

He  stumbled  slightly  in  the  darkness  before  he  found 
the  switch  of  the  lamp;  and  as  he  bent  over  it  she  saw 
that  his  face  was  flushed,  and  that  his  eyes  had  an  ex- 
cited light  which,  in  any  one  less  abstemious,  might 
almost  have  seemed  like  the  effect  of  wine. 

"Are  you  awake?"  he  asked. 

She  started  up  against  the  cushions,  her  black  hair 
streaming  about  her  small  ghostly  face. 

"Yes." 

He  walked  over  to  the  lounge  and  dropped  into  the 
low  chair  beside  it. 

"I've  given  that  cur  a  lesson  he  won't  forget,"  he 
exclaimed,  breathing  hard,  the  redness  deepening  in  his 
face. 

She  turned  on  him  in  joy  and  trembling.  "John! 
— Oh,  John!  You  didn't  follow  him  ?  Oh,  what  hap- 
pened? What  have  you  done?" 

"No.  I  didn't  follow  him.  But  there  are  some 
things  that  even  the  powers  above  can't  stand.  And  so 
they  managed  to  let  me  run  across  him — by  the  merest 
accident — and  I  gave  him  something  to  remember." 

He  spoke  in  a  strong  clear  voice  that  had  a  bright- 
ness like  the  brightness  in  his  eyes.  She  felt  its  heat 
in  her  veins — the  primitive  woman  in  her  glowed  at 
[  530  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

contact  with  the  primitive  man.     But  reflection  chilled 
her  the  next  moment. 

"But  why — why?  Oh,  how  could  you?  Where 
did  it  happen — oh,  not  in  the  street?" 

As  she  questioned  him,  there  rose  before  her  the 
terrified  vision  of  a  crowd  gathering — the  police,  news- 
papers, a  hideous  publicity.  He  must  have  been  mad 
to  do  it — and  yet  he  must  have  done  it  because  he  loved 
her! 

"No — no.  Don't  be  afraid.  The  powers  looked 
after  that  too.  There  was  no  one  about — and  I  don't 
think  he'll  talk  much  about  it." 

She  trembled,  fearing  yet  adoring  him.  Nothing 
could  have  been  more  unlike  the  Amherst  she  fancied 
she  knew  than  this  act  of  irrational  anger  which  had 
magically  lifted  the  darkness  from  his  spirit;  yet,  magi- 
cally also,  it  gave  him  back  to  her,  made  them  one  flesh 
once  more.  And  suddenly  the  pressure  of  opposed 
emotions  became  too  strong,  and  she  burst  into  tears. 

She  wept  painfully,  violently,  with  the  resistance  of 
strong  natures  unused  to  emotional  expression;  till  at 
length,  through  the  tumult  of  her  tears,  she  felt  her 
husband's  reassuring  touch. 

"Justine,"  he  said,  speaking  once  more  in  his  natural 
voice. 

She  raised  her  face  from  her  hands,  and  they  looked 
at  each  other. 

[  531  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Justine — this  afternoon — I  said  things  I  didn't 
mean  to  say." 

Her  lips  parted,  but  her  throat  was  still  full  of  sobs, 
and  she  could  only  look  at  him  while  the  tears  ran  down. 

"I  believe  I  understand  now,"  he  continued,  in  the 
same  quiet  tone. 

Her  hand  shrank  from  his  clasp,  and  she  began  to 
tremble  again.  "Oh,  if  you  only  believe.  .  .  if  you're 
not  sure.  .  .  don't  pretend  to  be!" 

He  sat  down  beside  her  and  drew  her  into  his  arms. 
"I  am  sure,"  he  whispered,  holding  her  close,  and 
pressing  his  lips  against  her  face  and  hair. 

"Oh,  my  husband — my  husband!  You've  come 
back  to  me?" 

He  answered  her  with  more  kisses,  murmuring 
through  them:  "Poor  child — poor  child — poor  Jus- 
tine. .  ."  while  he  held  her  fast. 

With  her  face  against  him  she  yielded  to  the  childish 
luxury  of  murmuring  out  unjustified  fears.  "I  was 
afraid  you  had  gone  back  to  Hanaford " 

"Tonight  ?    To  Hanaford  ? " 

"To  tell  your  mother." 

She  felt  a  contraction  of  the  arm  embracing  her,  as 
though  a  throb  of  pain  had  stiffened  it. 

"I  shall  never  tell  any  one,"  he  said  abruptly;  but 
as  he  felt  in  her  a  responsive  shrinking  he  gathered 
her  close  again,  whispering  through  the  hair  that  fell 
[  532  ] 


about  her  cheek:  "Don't  talk,  dear.  .  .  let  us  never 
talk  of  it  again.  .  ."  And  in  the  clasp  of  his  arms  her 
terror  and  anguish  subsided,  giving  way,  not  to  the  deep 
peace  of  tranquillized  thought,  but  to  a  confused  well- 
being  that  lulled  all  thought  to  sleep. 

XXXVII 

BUT  thought  could  never  be  long  silent  between 
them;  and  Justine's  triumph  lasted  but  a  day. 

With  its  end  she  saw  what  it  had  been  made  of:  the 
ascendency  of  youth  and  sex  over  his  subjugated  judg- 
ment. Her  first  impulse  was  to  try  and  maintain  it — 
why  not  use  the  protective  arts  with  which  love  inspired 
her?  She  who  lived  so  keenly  in  the  brain  could  live 
as  intensely  in  her  feelings;  her  quick  imagination 
tutored  her  looks  and  words,  taught  her  the  spells  to 
weave  about  shorn  giants.  And  for  a  few  days  she  and 
Amherst  lost  themselves  in  this  self -evoked  cloud  of 
passion,  both  clinging  fast  to  the  visible,  the  palpable 
in  their  relation,  as  if  conscious  already  that  its  finer 
essence  had  fled. 

Amherst  made  no  allusion  to  what  had  passed,  asked 
for  no  details,  offered  no  reassurances — behaved  as  if 
the  whole  episode  had  been  effaced  from  his  mind. 
And  from  Wyant  there  came  no  sound:  he  seemed  to 
have  disappeared  from  life  as  he  had  from  their  talk. 
[  533  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Toward  the  end  of  the  week  Amherst  announced 
that  he  must  return  to  Hanaford;  and  Justine  at  once 
declared  her  intention  of  going  with  him. 

He  seemed  surprised,  disconcerted  almost;  and  for 
the  first  time  the  shadow  of  what  had  happened  fell 
visibly  between  them. 

"But  ought  you  to  leave  Cicely  before  Mr.  Lang- 
hope  comes  back?"  he  suggested. 

"He  will  be  here  in  two  days." 

"But  he  will  expect  to  find  you." 

"It  is  almost  the  first  of  April.  We  are  to  have 
Cicely  with  us  for  the  summer.  There  is  no  reason 
why  I  should  not  go  back  to  my  work  at  Westmore." 

There  was  in  fact  no  reason  that  he  could  produce; 
and  the  next  day  they  returned  to  Hanaford  together. 

With  her  perceptions  strung  to  the  last  pitch  of  sen- 
sitiveness, she  felt  a  change  in  Amherst  as  soon  as  they 
re-entered  Bessy's  house.  He  was  still  scrupulously 
considerate,  almost  too  scrupulously  tender;  but  with 
a  tinge  of  lassitude,  like  a  man  who  tries  to  keep  up 
under  the  stupefying  approach  of  illness.  And  she  be- 
gan to  hate  the  power  by  which  she  held  him.  It  was 
not  thus  they  had  once  walked  together,  free  in  mind 
though  so  linked  in  habit  and  feeling;  when  their  love 
was  not  a  deadening  drug  but  a  vivifying  element  that 
cleared  thought  instead  of  stifling  it.  There  were 
moments  when  she  felt  that  open  alienation  would  be 
[534  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

easier,  because  it  would  be  nearer  the  truth.  And  at 
such  moments  she  longed  to  speak,  to  beg  him  to  utter 
his  mind,  to  go  with  her  once  for  all  into  the  depths  of 
the  subject  they  continued  to  avoid.  But  at  the  last 
her  heart  always  failed  her:  she  could  not  face  the 
thought  of  losing  him,  of  hearing  him  speak  estrang- 
ing words  to  her. 

They  had  been  at  Hanaford  for  about  ten  days  when, 
one  morning  at  breakfast,  Amherst  uttered  a  sudden 
exclamation  over  a  letter  he  was  reading. 

"What  is  it?"  she  asked  in  a  tremor. 

He  had  grown  very  pale,  and  was  pushing  the  hair 
from  his  forehead  with  the  gesture  habitual  to  him  in 
moments  of  painful  indecision. 

"What  is  it?"  Justine  repeated,  her  fear  growing. 

"Nothing "  he  began,  thrusting  the  letter  under 

the  pile  of  envelopes  by  his  plate;  but  she  continued  to 
look  at  him  anxiously,  till  she  drew  his  eyes  to  hers. 

"Mr.  Langhope  writes  that  they've  appointed  Wyant 
to  Saint  Christopher's,"  he  said  abruptly. 

"Oh,  the  letter — we  forgot  the  letter!"  she  cried. 

"Yes — we  forgot  the  letter." 

"But  how  dare  he ?" 

Amherst  said  nothing,  but  the  long  silence  between 
them  seemed  full  of  ironic  answers,  till  she  brought 
out,  hardly  above  her  breath:  "What  shall  you 
do?" 

[  535  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Write  at  once — tell  Mr.  Langhope  he's  not  fit  for 
the  place." 

"Of  course "  she  murmured 

He  went  on  tearing  open  his  other  letters,  and  glanc- 
ing at  their  contents.  She  leaned  back  in  her  chair, 
her  cup  of  coffee  untasted,  listening  to  the  recurrent 
crackle  of  torn  paper  as  he  tossed  aside  one  letter  after 
another. 

Presently  he  rose  from  his  seat,  and  as  she  followed 
him  from  the  dining-room  she  noticed  that  his  break- 
fast had  also  remained  untasted.  He  gathered  up  his 
letters  and  walked  toward  the  smoking-room;  and  after 
a  moment's  hesitation  she  joined  him. 

"John,"  she  said  from  the  threshold. 

He  was  just  seating  himself  at  his  desk,  but  he  turned 
to  her  with  an  obvious  effort  at  kindness  which  made 
the  set  look  of  his  face  the  more  marked. 

She  closed  the  door  and  went  up  to  him. 

"If  you  write  that  to  Mr.  Langhope — Dr.  Wyant 
will — will  tell  him,"  she  said. 

"Yes— we  must  be  prepared  for  that." 

She  was  silent,  and  Amherst  flung  himself  down  on 
the  leather  ottoman  against  the  wall.  She  stood  be- 
fore him,  clasping  and  unclasping  her  hands  in  speech- 
less distress. 

"What  would  you  have  me  do ?"  he  asked  at  length, 
almost  irritably. 

[  536  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I  only  thought.  .  .  he  told  me  he  would  keep 
straight.  .  .  if  he  only  had  a  chance,"  she  faltered 
out. 

Amherst  lifted  his  head  slowly,  and  looked  at  her. 
"You  mean — I  am  to  do  nothing?  Is  that  it?" 

She  moved  nearer  to  him  with  beseeching  eyes.  "I 
can't  bear  it.  .  .  I  can't  bear  that  others  should  come 
between  us,"  she  broke  out  passionately. 

He  made  no  answer,  but  she  could  see  a  look  of  suf- 
fering cross  his  face,  and  coming  still  closer,  she  sank 
down  on  the  ottoman,  laying  her  hand  on  his.  "  John 
.  .  .  oh,  John,  spare  me,"  she  whispered. 

For  a  moment  his  hand  lay  quiet  under  hers;  then 
he  drew  it  out,  and  enclosed  her  trembling  fingers. 

"Very  well — I'll  give  him  a  chance — I'll  do  nothing," 
he  said,  suddenly  putting  his  other  arm  about  her. 

The  reaction  caught  her  by  the  throat,  forcing  out  a 
dry  sob  or  two ;  and  as  she  pressed  her  face  against  him 
he  raised  it  up  and  gently  kissed  her. 

But  even  as  their  lips  met  she  felt  that  they  were  seal- 
ing a  treaty  with  dishonour.  That  his  kiss  should  come 
to  mean  that  to  her!  It  was  unbearable — worse  than 
any  personal  pain — the  thought  of  dragging  him  down 
to  falsehood  through  her  weakness. 

She  drew  back  and  rose  to  her  feet,  putting  aside  his 
detaining  hand. 

"No — no!  What  am  I  saying?  It  can't  be — you 
[537] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

must  tell  the  truth."  Her  voice  gathered  strength  as 
she  spoke.  "Oh,  forget  what  I  said — I  didn't  mean 
it!" 

But  again  he  seemed  sunk  in  inaction,  like  a  man 
over  whom  some  baneful  lethargy  is  stealing. 

"John — John — forget!"  she  repeated  urgently. 

He  looked  up  at  her.  "You  realize  what  it  will 
mean?" 

"Yes — I  realize.  .  .  But  it  must  be.  .  .  And  it  will 
make  no  difference  between  us.  .  .  will  it?" 

"No — no.  Why  should  it?"  he  answered  apathetic- 
ally. 

"Then  write — tell  Mr.  Langhope  not  to  give  him  the 
place.  I  want  it  over." 

He  rose  slowly  to  his  feet,  without  looking  at  her 
again,  and  walked  over  to  the  desk.  She  sank  down 
on  the  ottoman  and  watched  him  with  burning  eyes 
while  he  drew  forth  a  sheet  of  note-paper  and  began 
to  write. 

But  after  he  had  written  a  few  words  he  laid  down 
his  pen,  and  swung  his  chair  about  so  that  he  faced  her. 

"I  can't  do  it  in  this  way,"  he  exclaimed. 

"How  then  ?  What  do  you  mean  ?"  she  said,  start- 
ing up. 

He  looked  at  her.  "Do  you  want  the  story  to  come 
from  Wyant?" 

"Oh **  She  looked  back  at  him  with  sudden 

[  538  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

insight.  "You  mean  to  tell  Mr.  Langhope  your- 
self?" 

"Yes.  I  mean  to  take  the  next  train  to  town  and 
tell  him.  " 

Her  trembling  increased  so  much  that  she  had  to 
rest  her  hands  against  the  edge  of  the  ottoman  to  steady 
herself.  "But  if.  .  .  if  after  all.  .  .  Wyant  should  not 
speak  ?  " 

"Well — if  he  shouldn't?  Could  you  bear  to  owe 
our  safety  to  him?" 

"Safety!" 

"  It  comes  to  that,  doesn't  it,  if  we're  afraid  to  speak  ?  " 

She  sat  silent,  letting  the  bitter  truth  of  this  sink 
into  her  till  it  poured  courage  into  her  veins. 

"Yes — it  comes  to  that,"  she  confessed. 

"Then  you  feel  as  I  do?" 

"That  you  must  go ?" 

"That  this  is  intolerable!" 

The  words  struck  down  her  last  illusion,  and  she  rose 
and  went  over  to  the  writing-table.  "Yes — go,"  she 
said. 

He  stood  up  also,  and  took  both  her  hands,  not  in  a 
caress,  but  gravely,  almost  severely. 

"Listen,    Justine.     You    must    understand    exactly 

what  this  means — may  mean.     I  am  willing  to  go  on 

as  we  are  now.  .  .  as  long  as  we  can.  .  .  because  I 

love   you.  .  .  because  I  would   do  anything  to   spare 

[  539  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

you  pain.  But  if  I  speak  I  must  say  everything — I 
must  follow  this  thing  up  to  its  uttermost  consequences. 
That's  what  I  want  to  make  clear  to  you." 

Her  heart  sank  with  a  foreboding  of  new  peril. 
"What  consequences?" 

"Can't  you  see  for  yourself — when  you  look  about 
this  house?" 

"This  house ?" 

He  dropped  her  hands  and  took  an  abrupt  turn  across 
the  room. 

"I  owe  everything  to  her,"  he  broke  out,  "all  I  am, 
all  I  have,  all  I  have  been  able  to  give  you — and  I  must 
go  and  tell  her  father  that  you.  .  . " 

"Stop — stop!"  she  cried,  lifting  her  hands  as  if  to 
keep  off  a  blow. 

"No — don't  make  me  stop.  We  must  face  it,"  he 
said  doggedly. 

"But  this— this  isn't  the  truth!  You  put  it  as  if— 
almost  as  if " 

"Yes — don't  finish. — Has  it  occurred  to  you  that  he 
may  think  that  ?"  Amherst  asked  with  a  terrible  laugh. 
But  at  that  she  recovered  her  courage,  as  she  always 
did  when  an  extreme  call  was  made  on  it. 

"No — I  don't  believe  it!  If  he  does,  it  will  be  be- 
cause you  think  it  yourself.  .  ."  Her  voice  sank,  and 
she  lifted  her  hands  and  pressed  them  to  her  temples. 
"And  if  you  think  it,  nothing  matters.  .  .  one  way  or 
[  540  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

the  other.  .  ."  She  paused,  and  her  voice  regained  its 
strength.  "That  is  what  I  must  face  before  you  go: 
what  you  think,  what  you  believe  of  me.  You've  never 
told  me  that." 

Amherst,  at  the  challenge,  remained  silent,  while  a 
slow  red  crept  to  his  cheek-bones. 

"Haven't  I  told  you  by — by  what  I've  done?"  he 
said  slowly. 

"No — what  you've  done  has  covered  up  what  you 
thought;  and  I've  helped  you  cover  it — I'm  to  blame 
too!  But  it  was  not  for  this  that  we.  .  .  that  we  had 
that  half-year  together.  .  .  not  to  sink  into  connivance 
and  evasion !  I  don't  want  another  hour  of  sham  hap- 
piness. I  want  the  truth  from  you,  whatever  it  is." 

He  stood  motionless,  staring  moodily  at  the  floor. 
"Don't  you  see  that's  my  misery — that  I  don't  know 
myself?" 

"You  don't  know.  .  .  what  you  think  of  me?" 

"Good  God,  Justine,  why  do  you  try  to  strip  life 
naked  ?  I  don't  know  what's  been  going  on  in  me  these 
last  weeks " 

"You  must  know  what  you  think  of  my  motive.  .  . 
for  doing  what  I  did." 

She  saw  in  his  face  how  he  shrank  from  the  least  al- 
lusion to  the  act  about  which  their  torment  revolved. 
But  he  forced  himself  to  raise  his  head  and  look  at  her. 
"I  have  never — for  one  moment — questioned  your 
[  541  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

motive — or  failed  to  see  that  it  was  justified.  .  .  under 
the  circumstances.  .  ." 

"Oh,  John — John!"  she  broke  out  in  the  wild  joy 
of  hearing  herself  absolved;  but  the  next  instant  her 
subtle  perceptions  felt  the  unconscious  reserve  behind 
his  admission. 

"Your  mind  justifies  me — not  your  heart;  isn't  that 
your  misery?"  she  said. 

He  looked  at  her  almost  piteously,  as  if,  in  the  last 
resort,  it  was  from  her  that  light  must  come  to  him. 
"On  my  soul,  I  don't  know.  .  .  I  can't  tell.  .  .  it's  all 
dark  in  me.  I  know  you  did  what  you  thought  best.  .  . 
if  I  had  been  there,  I  believe  I  should  have  asked  you 
to  do  it.  .  .  but  I  wish  to  God " 

She  interrupted  him  sobbingly.  "Oh,  I  ought  never 
to  have  let  you  love  me!  I  ought  to  have  seen  that  I 
was  cut  off  from  you  forever.  I  have  brought  you 
wretchedness  when  I  would  have  given  my  life  for 
you!  I  don't  deserve  that  you  should  forgive  me 
for  that." 

Her  sudden  outbreak  seemed  to  restore  his  self- 
possession.  He  went  up  to  her  and  took  her  hand  with 
a  quieting  touch. 

"There  is  no  question  of  forgiveness,  Justine.  Don't 
let  us  torture  each  other  with  vain  repinings.  Our 
business  is  to  face  the  thing,  and  we  shall  be  better  for 
having  talked  it  out.  I  shall  be  better,  for  my  part, 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

for  having  told  Mr.  Langhope.  But  before  I  go  I 
want  to  be  sure  that  you  understand  the  view  he  may 
take.  .  .  and  the  effect  it  will  probably  have  on  our 
future." 

"Our  future?"  She  started.  "No,  I  don't  under- 
stand." 

Amherst  paused  a  moment,  as  if  trying  to  choose  the 
words  least  likely  to  pain  her.  "  Mr.  Langhope  knows 
that  my  marriage  was.  .  .  unhappy;  through  my  fault, 
he  no  doubt  thinks.  And  if  he  chooses  to  infer  that.  .  . 
that  you  and  I  may  have  cared  for  each  other.  .  .  be- 
fore. .  .  and  that  it  was  because  there  was  a  chance  of 
recovery  that  you " 

"Oh " 

"We  must  face  it,"  he  repeated  inflexibly.  "And 
you  must  understand  that,  if  there  is  the  faintest  hint 
of  this  kind,  I  shall  give  up  everything  here,  as  soon  as 
it  can  be  settled  legally — God,  how  Tredegar  will  like 
the  job ! — and  you  and  I  will  have  to  go  and  begin  life 
over  again.  .  .  somewhere  else." 

For  an  instant  a  mad  hope  swelled  in  her — the  vision 
of  escaping  with  him  into  new  scenes,  a  new  life,  away 
from  the  coil  of  memories  that  bound  them  down  as 
in  a  net.  But  the  reaction  of  reason  came  at  once — she 
saw  him  cut  off  from  his  chosen  work,  his  career  de- 
stroyed, his  honour  clouded,  above  all — ah,  this  was 
what  wrung  them  both! — his  task  undone,  his  people 
I  543] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

flung  back  into  the  depths  from  which  he  had  lifted 
them.  And  all  through  her  doing — all  because  she 
had  clutched  at  happiness  with  too  rash  a  hand !  The 
thought  stung  her  to  passionate  activity  of  mind — made 
her  resolve  to  risk  anything,  dare  anything,  before  she 
involved  him  farther  in  her  own  ruin.  She  felt  her 
brain  clear  gradually,  and  the  thickness  dissolve  in  her 
throat. 

"I  understand,"  she  said  in  a  low  voice,  raising  her 
eyes  to  his. 

"And  you're  ready  to  accept  the  consequences? 
Think  again  before  it's  too  late." 

She  paused.  "That  is  what  I  should  like.  .  .  what 
I  wanted  to  ask  you.  .  .  the  time  to  think." 

She  saw  a  slight  shade  cross  his  face,  as  if  he  had  not 
expected  this  failure  of  courage  in  her;  but  he  said 
quietly:  "You  don't  want  me  to  go  today?" 

"Not  today — give  me  one  more  day." 

"Very  well." 

She  laid  a  timid  hand  on  his  arm.  "Please  go  out  to 
Westmore  as  usual — as  if  nothing  had  happened.  And 
tonight.  .  .  when  you  come  back.  .  .  I  shall  have 
decided." 

"Very  well,"  he  repeated. 

"You'll  be  gone  all  day?" 

He  glanced  at  his  watch.     "Yes — I  had  meant  to  be; 

unless " 

[  544  } 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"No;  I  would  rather  be  alone.  Good-bye,"  she 
said,  letting  her  hand  slip  softly  along  his  coat-sleeve 
as  he  turned  to  the  door 


XXXVIII 

AT  half-past  six  that  afternoon,  just  as  Amherst, 
on  his  return  from  the  mills,  put  the  key  into  his 
door  at  Hanaford,  Mrs.  Ansell,  in  New  York,  was 
being  shown  into  Mr.  Langhope's  library. 

As  she  entered,  her  friend  rose  from  his  chair  by  the 
fire,  and  turned  on  her  a  face  so  disordered  by  emotion 
that  she  stopped  short  with  an  exclamation  of  alarm. 

"Henry — what  has  happened?  Why  did  you  send 
for  me?" 

"Because  I  couldn't  go  to  you.  I  couldn't  trust 
myself  in  the  streets — in  the  light  of  day." 

"But  why?     What  is  it?— Not  Cicely ?" 

He  struck  both  hands  upward  with  a  comprehensive 
gesture.  "Cicely — everyone — the  whole  world !"  His 
clenched  fist  came  down  on  the  table  against  which  he 
was  leaning.  "  Maria,  my  girl  might  have  been  saved ! " 

Mrs.  Ansell  looked  at  him  with  growing  perturba- 
tion. "  Saved — Bessy's  life  ?  But  how  ?  By  whom  ?  " 

"She  might  have  been  allowed  to  live,  I  mean — to 
recover.  She  was  killed,  Maria;  that  woman  killed 
her!" 

[  545  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Mrs.  Ansell,  with  another  cry  of  bewilderment,  let 
herself  drop  helplessly  into  the  nearest  chair.  "In 
heaven's  name,  Henry — what  woman?" 

He  seated  himself  opposite  to  her,  clutching  at  his 
stick,  and  leaning  his  weight  heavily  on  it — a  white 
dishevelled  old  man.  "I  wonder  why  you  ask — just  to 
spare  me?" 

Their  eyes  met  in  a  piercing  exchange  of  question 
and  answer,  and  Mrs.  Ansell  tried  to  bring  out  reason- 
ably: "I  ask  in  order  to  understand  what  you  are 
saying." 

"Well,  then,  if  you  insist  on  keeping  up  appearances 
— my  daughter-in-law  killed  my  daughter.  There  you 
have  it."  He  laughed  silently,  with  a  tear  on  his  red- 
dened eye-lids. 

Mrs.  Ansell  groaned.  "Henry,  you  are  raving — I 
understand  less  and  less." 

"I  don't  see  how  I  can  speak  more  plainly.  She 
told  me  so  herself,  in  this  room,  not  an  hour  ago." 

"She  told  you?    Who  told  you?" 

"John  Amherst's  wife.  Told  me  she'd  killed  my 
child.  It's  as  easy  as  breathing — if  you  know  how  to 
use  a  morphia-needle." 

Light  seemed  at  last  to  break  on  his  hearer.  "Oh, 
my  poor  Henry — you  mean — she  gave  too  much? 
There  was  some  dreadful  accident?" 

"There  was  no  accident.  She  killed  my  child — 
[  546  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

killed  her  deliberately.  Don't  look  at  me  as  if  I  were 
a  madman.  She  sat  in  that  chair  you're  in  when  she 
told  me." 

"Justine?  Has  she  been  here  today?"  Mrs.  Ansell 
paused  in  a  painful  effort  to  readjust  her  thoughts. 
"But  why  did  she  tell  you?" 

"That's  simple  enough.  To  prevent  Wyant's  do- 
ing it." 

"Oh "  broke  from  his  hearer,  in  a  long  sigh  of 

fear  and  intelligence.  Mr.  Langhope  looked  at  her 
with  a  smile  of  miserable  exultation. 

"You  knew — you  suspected  all  along? — But  now 
you  must  speak  out!"  he  exclaimed  with  a  sudden  note 
of  command. 

She  sat  motionless,  as  if  trying  to  collect  herself. 
"I  know  nothing — I  only  meant — why  was  this  never 
known  before?" 

He  was  upon  her  at  once.  "You  think — because 
they  understood  each  other?  And  now  there's  been 
a  break  between  them  ?  He  wanted  too  big  a  share  of 
the  spoils ?  Oh,  it's  all  so  abysmally  vile!" 

He  covered  his  face  with  a  shaking  hand,  and  Mrs. 
Ansell  remained  silent,  plunged  in  a  speechless  misery 
of  conjecture.  At  length  she  regained  some  measure  of 
her  habitual  composure,  and  leaning  forward,  with  her 
eyes  on  his  face,  said  in  a  quiet  tone:  "If  I  am  to  help 
you,  you  must  try  to  tell  me  just  what  has  happened." 
[  547] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

He  made  an  impatient  gesture.  "Haven't  I  told  you  ? 
She  found  that  her  accomplice  meant  to  speak,  and 
rushed  to  town  to  forestall  him." 

Mrs.  Ansell  reflected.  "But  why — with  his  place 
at  Saint  Christopher's  secured — did  Dr.  Wyant  choose 
this  time  to  threaten  her — if,  as  you  imagine,  he's  an 
accomplice?" 

"Because  he's  a  drug-taker,  and  she  didn't  wish  him 
to  have  the  place." 

"She  didn't  wish  it?  But  that  does  not  look  as  if 
she  were  afraid.  She  had  only  to  hold  her  tongue!" 

Mr.  Langhope  laughed  sardonically.  "It's  not  quite 
so  simple.  Amherst  was  coming  to  town  to  tell  me." 

"Ah— he  knows?" 

"Yes — and  she  preferred  that  I  should  have  her 
version  first." 

"And  what  is  her  version?" 

The  furrows  of  misery  deepened  in  Mr.  Langhope's 
face.  "Maria — don't  ask  too  much  of  me!  I  can't 
go  over  it  again.  She  says  she  wanted  to  spare  my  child 
— she  says  the  doctors  were  keeping  her  alive,  tortur- 
ing her  uselessly,  as  a.  .  .  a  sort  of  scientific  experi- 
ment. .  .  She  forced  on  me  the  hideous  details.  .  ' 

Mrs.  Ansell  waited  a  moment. 

"  Well !     May  it  not  be  true  ?  " 

"Wyant's  version  is  different.     He  says  Bessy  would 
have  recovered — he  says  Garford  thought  so  too." 
[  548] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"And  what  does  she  answer?     She  denies  it?" 

"No.  She  admits  that  Garford  was  in  doubt.  But 
she  says  the  chance  was  too  remote — the  pain  too  bad 
.  .  .  that's  her  cue,  naturally!" 

Mrs.  Ansell,  leaning  back  in  her  chair,  with  hands 
meditatively  stretched  along  its  arms,  gave  herself  up 
to  silent  consideration  of  the  fragmentary  statements 
cast  before  her.  The  long  habit  of  ministering  to  her 
friends  in  moments  of  perplexity  and  distress  had  given 
her  an  almost  judicial  keenness  in  disentangling  and 
coordinating  facts  incoherently  presented,  and  in  seiz- 
ing on  the  thread  of  motive  that  connected  them ;  but  she 
had  never  before  been  confronted  with  a  situation  so 
poignant  in  itself,  and  bearing  so  intimately  on  her  per- 
sonal feelings ;  and  she  needed  time  to  free  her  thoughts 
from  the  impending  rush  of  emotion. 

At  last  she  raised  her  head  and  said:  "Why  did  Mr. 
Amherst  let  her  come  to  you,  instead  of  coming  him- 
self?" 

"He  knows  nothing  of  her  being  here.  She  per- 
suaded him  to  wait  a  day,  and  as  soon  as  he  had  gone 
to  the  mills  this  morning  she  took  the  first  train  to 
town." 

"Ah "  Mrs.  Ansell  murmured  thoughtfully;  and 

Mr.  Langhope  rejoined,  with  a  conclusive  gesture: 
"Do  you  want  more  proofs  of  panic-stricken  guilt?" 

"Oh,  guilt — "  His  friend  revolved  her  large  soft 
[  549  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

muff  about  a  drooping  hand.  "There's  so  much  still 
to  understand." 

"Your  mind  does  not,  as  a  rule,  work  so  slowly!" 
he  said  with  some  asperity;  but  she  paid  no  heed  to  his 
tone. 

"Amherst,  for  instance — how  long  has  he  known 
of  this?"  she  continued. 

"  A  week  or  two  only — she  made  that  clear." 

"And  what  is  his  attitude?" 

"Ah — that,  I  conjecture,  is  just  what  she  means  to 
keep  us  from  knowing!" 

"You  mean  she's  afraid ?" 

Mr.  Langhope  gathered  his  haggard  brows  in  a 
frown.  "She's  afraid,  of  course — mortally — I  never 
saw  a  woman  more  afraid.  I  only  wonder  she  had  the 
courage  to  face  me." 

"Ah— that's  it!  Why  did  she  face  you?  To  ex- 
tenuate her  act — to  give  you  her  version,  because  she 
feared  his  might  be  worse?  Do  you  gather  that  that 
was  her  motive?" 

It  was  Mr.  Langhope's  turn  to  hesitate.  He  fur- 
rowed the  thick  Turkey  rug  with  the  point  of  his  ebony 
stick,  pausing  once  or  twice  to  revolve  it  gimlet-like  in 
a  gap  of  the  pile. 

"Not  her  avowed  motive,  naturally." 

"Well— at  least,  then,  let  me  have  that." 

"Her  avowed  motive?  Oh,  she'd  prepared  one,  of 
[  550  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

course — trust  her  to  have  a  dozen  ready!  The  one  she 
produced  was — simply  the  desire  to  protect  her  hus- 
band." 

"Her  husband?    Does  he  too  need  protection?" 

"My  God,  if  he  takes  her  side !  At  any  rate, 

her  fear  seemed  to  be  that  what  she  had  done  might 
ruin  him;  might  cause  him  to  feel — as  well  he  may! — 
that  the  mere  fact  of  being  her  husband  makes  his  situ- 
ation as  Cicely's  step-father,  as  my  son-in-law,  intoler- 
able. And  she  came  to  clear  him,  as  it  were — to  find 
out,  in  short,  on  what  terms  I  should  be  willing  to  con- 
tinue my  present  relations  with  him  as  though  this  hid- 
eous thing  had  not  been  known  to  me." 

Mrs.  Ansell  raised  her  head  quickly.  "Well — and 
what  were  your  terms?" 

He  hesitated.  "  She  spared  me  the  pain  of  proposing 
any — I  had  only  to  accept  hers." 

"Hers?" 

"That  she  should  disappear  altogether  from  my 
sight — and  from  the  child's,  naturally.  Good  heaven, 
I  should  like  to  include  Amherst  in  that!  But  I'm 
tied  hand  and  foot,  as  you  see,  by  Cicely's  interests; 
and  I'm  bound  to  say  she  exonerated  him  completely 
— completely!" 

Mrs.  Ansell  was  again  silent,  but  a  swift  flight  of 
thoughts  traversed  her  drooping  face.  "But  if  you  are 
to  remain  on  the  old  terms  with  her  husband,  how  is 
D  551  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

she  to  disappear  out  of  your  life  without  also  disap- 
pearing out  of  his?" 

Mr.  Langhope  gave  a  slight  laugh.  "I  leave  her 
to  work  out  that  problem." 

"And  you  think  Amherst  will  consent  to  such  con- 
ditions?" 

"He's  not  to  know  of  them." 

The  unexpectedness  of  the  reply  reduced  Mrs.  An- 
sell  to  a  sound  of  inarticulate  interrogation;  and  Mr. 
Langhope  continued:  "Not  at  first,  that  is.  She  had 
thought  it  all  out — foreseen  everything;  and  she  wrung 
from  me — I  don't  yet  know  how ! — a  promise  that  when 
I  saw  him  I  would  make  it  appear  that  I  cleared  him 
completely,  not  only  of  any  possible  complicity,  or 
whatever  you  choose  to  call  it,  but  of  any  sort  of  con- 
nection with  the  matter  in  my  thoughts  of  him.  I  am, 
in  short,  to  let  him  feel  that  he  and  I  are  to  continue 
on  the  old  footing — and  I  agreed,  on  the  condition  of 
her  effacing  herself  somehow — of  course  on  some  other 
pretext." 

"Some  other  pretext?  But  what  conceivable  pre- 
text? My  poor  friend,  he  adores  her!" 

Mr.  Langhope  raised  his  eyebrows  slightly.  *"We 
haven't  seen  him  since  this  became  known  to  him. 
She  has;  and  she  let  slip  that  he  was  horror- 
struck." 

Mrs.  Ansell  looked  up  with  a  quick  exclamation. 
[  552  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"  Let  slip  ?  Isn't  it  much  more  likely  that  she  forced 
it  on  you — emphasized  it  to  the  last  limit  of  credu- 
lity?" She  sank  her  hands  to  the  arms  of  the  chair, 
and  exclaimed,  looking  him  straight  in  the  eyes: 
"You  say  she  was  frightened  ?  It  strikes  me  she  was 
dauntless ! " 

Mr.  Langhope  stared  a  moment;  then  he  said,  with 
an  ironic  shrug:  "No  doubt,  then,  she  counted  on  its 
striking  me  too." 

Mrs.  Ansell  breathed  a  shuddering  sigh.  "Oh,  I 
understand  your  feeling  as  you  do — I'm  deep  in  the 
horror  of  it  myself.  But  I  can't  help  seeing  that  this 
woman  might  have  saved  herself — and  that  she's  chosen 
to  save  her  husband  instead.  What  I  don't  see,  from 
what  I  know  of  him,"  she  musingly  proceeded,  "is 
how,  on  any  imaginable  pretext,  she  will  induce  him 
to  accept  the  sacrifice." 

Mr.  Langhope  made  a  resentful  movement.  "If 
that's  the  only  point  your  mind  dwells  on !" 

Mrs.  Ansell  looked  up.  "It  doesn't  dwell  anywhere 
as  yet — except,  my  poor  Henry,"  she  murmured,  rising 
to  move  toward  him,  and  softly  laying  her  hand  on  his 
bent  shoulder — "except  on  your  distress  and  misery — 
on  the  very  part  I  can't  yet  talk  of,  can't  question  you 
about.  .  ." 

He  let  her  hand  rest  there  a  moment;  then  he  turned, 
and  drawing  it  into  his  own  tremulous  fingers,  pressed 
[  553  ]  , 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

it  silently,  with  a  clinging  helpless  grasp  that  drew  the 
tears  to  her  eyes. 

Justine  Brent,  in  her  earliest  girlhood,  had  gone 
through  one  of  those  emotional  experiences  that  are  the 
infantile  diseases  of  the  heart.  She  had  fancied  her- 
self beloved  of  a  youth  of  her  own  age;  had  secretly  re- 
turned his  devotion,  and  had  seen  it  reft  from  her  by 
another.  Such  an  incident,  as  inevitable  as  the  measles, 
sometimes,  like  that  mild  malady,  leaves  traces  out  of 
all  proportion  to  its  actual  virulence.  The  blow  fell  on 
Justine  with  tragic  suddenness,  and  she  reeled  under  it, 
thinking  darkly  of  death,  and  renouncing  all  hopes  of 
future  happiness.  Her  ready  pen  often  beguiled  her 
into  recording  her  impressions,  and  she  now  found 
an  escape  from  despair  in  writing  the  history  of  a 
damsel  similarly  wronged.  In  her  tale,  the  heroine 
killed  herself;  but  the  author,  saved  by  this  vicarious 
sacrifice,  lived,  and  in  time  even  smiled  over  her 
manuscript. 

It  was  many  years  since  Justine  Amherst  had  recalled 
this  youthful  incident;  but  the  memory  of  it  recurred 
to  her  as  she  turned  from  Mr.  Langhope's  door.  For 
a  moment  death  seemed  the  easiest  escape  from  what 
confronted  her;  but  though  she  could  no  longer  med- 
icine her  despair  by  turning  it  into  fiction,  she  knew  at 
once  that  she  must  somehow  transpose  it  into  terms  of 
,  [  554  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

action,  that  she  must  always  escape  from  life  into  more 
life,  and  not  into  its  negation. 

She  had  been  carried  into  Mr.  Langhope's  presence 
by  that  expiatory  passion  which  still  burns  so  high,  and 
•draws  its  sustenance  from  so  deep  down,  in  the  un- 
sleeping hearts  of  women.  Though  she  had  never  wav- 
ered in  her  conviction  that  her  act  had  been  justified 
her  ideas  staggered  under  the  sudden  comprehension  of 
its  consequences.  Not  till  that  morning  had  she  seen 
those  consequences  in  their  terrible,  unsuspected  ex- 
tent, had  she  understood  how  one  stone  rashly  loosened 
from  the  laboriously  erected  structure  of  human  so- 
ciety may  produce  remote  fissures  in  that  clumsy  fabric. 
She  saw  that,  having  hazarded  the  loosening  of  the 
stone,  she  should  have  held  herself  apart  from  ordinary 
human  ties,  like  some  priestess  set  apart  for  the  service 
of  the  temple.  And  instead,  she  had  seized  happiness 
with  both  hands,  taken  it  as  the  gift  of  the  very  fate  she 
had  herself  precipitated!  She  remembered  some  old 
Greek  saying  to  the  effect  that  the  gods  never  forgive 
the  mortal  who  presumes  to  love  and  suffer  like  a  god. 
She  had  dared  to  do  both,  and  the  gods  were  bringing 
ruin  on  that  deeper  self  which  had  its  life  in  those  about 
her. 

So  much  had  become  clear  to  her  when  she  heard 
Amherst  declare  his  intention  of  laying  the  facts  be- 
fore Mr.  Langhope.  His  few  broken  wo'rds  lit  up  the 
I  555  1 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

farthest  verge  of  their  lives.  She  saw  that  his  retrospec- 
tive reverence  for  his  wife's  memory,  which  was  far  as 
possible  removed  from  the  strong  passion  of  the  mind 
and  senses  that  bound  him  to  herself,  was  indelibly 
stained  and  desecrated  by  the  discovery  that  all  he  had 
received  from  the  one  woman  had  been  won  for  him 
by  the  deliberate  act  of  the  other.  This  was  what  no 
reasoning,  no  appeal  to  the  calmer  judgment,  could  ever, 
in  his  inmost  thoughts,  undo  or  extenuate.  It  could 
find  appeasement  only  in  the  renunciation  of  all  that 
had  come  to  him  from  Bessy;  and  this  renunciation,  so 
different  from  the  mere  sacrifice  of  material  well-being, 
was  bound  up  with  consequences  so  far-reaching,  so 
destructive  to  the  cause  which  had  inspired  his  whole 
life,  that  Justine  felt  the  helpless  terror  of  the  mortal 
who  has  launched  one  of  the  heavenly  bolts. 

She  could  think  of  no  way  of  diverting  it  but  the  way 
she  had  chosen.  She  must  see  Mr.  Langhope  first, 
must  clear  Amherst  of  the  least  faint  association  with 
her  act  or  her  intention.  And  to  do  this  she  must  ex- 
aggerate, not  her  own  compunction — for  she  could  not 
depart  from  the  exact  truth  in  reporting  her  feelings 
and  convictions — but  her  husband's  first  instinctive 
movement  of  horror,  the  revulsion  of  feeling  her  confes- 
sion had  really  produced  in  him.  This  was  the  most 
painful  part  of  her  task,  and  for  this  reason  her  excited 
imagination  clothed  it  with  a  special  expiatory  value. 
[  556  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

If  she  could  purchase  Amherst's  peace  of  mind,  and  the 
security  of  his  future,  by  confessing,  and  even  over-em- 
phasizing, the  momentary  estrangement  between  them 
there  would  be  a  bitter  joy  in  such  payment! 

Her  hour  with  Mr.  Langhope  proved  the  correct- 
ness of  her  intuition.  She  could  save  Amherst  only  by 
effacing  herself  from  his  life:  those  about  him  would  be 
only  too  ready  to  let  her  bear  the  full  burden  of  obloquy. 
She  could  see  that,  for  a  dozen  reasons,  Mr.  Langhope, 
even  in  the  first  shock  of  his  dismay,  unconsciously 
craved  a  way  of  exonerating  Amherst,  of  preserving 
intact  the  relation  on  which  so  much  of  his  comfort  had 
come  to  depend.  And  she  had  the  courage  to  make 
the  most  of  his  desire,  to  fortify  it  by  isolating  Am- 
herst's point  of  view  from  hers ;  so  that,  when  the  hour 
was  over,  she  had  the  solace  of  feeling  that  she  had 
completely  freed  him  from  any  conceivable  consequence 
of  her  act. 

So  far,  the  impetus  of  self-sacrifice  had  carried  her 
straight  to  her  goal ;  but,  as  frequently  happens  with  such 
atoning  impulses,  it  left  her  stranded  just  short  of  any 
subsequent  plan  of  conduct.  Her  next  step,  indeed, 
was  clear  enough:  she  must  return  to  Hanaford,  ex- 
plain to  her  husband  that  she  had  felt  impelled  to  tell 
her  own  story  to  Mr.  Langhope,  and  then  take  up  her 
ordinary  life  till  chance  offered  her  a  pretext  for  fulfill- 
ing her  promise.  But  what  pretext  was  likely  to  pre- 
[  557  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

sent  itself?  No  symbolic  horn  would  sound  the  hour 
of  fulfillment;  she  must  be  her  own  judge,  and  hear  the 
call  in  the  depths  of  her  own  conscience. 


XXXIX 

WHEN  Amherst,  returning  late  that  afternoon 
from  Westmore,  learned  of  his  wife's  departure, 
and  read  the  note  she  had  left,  he  found  it,  for  a  time, 
impossible  to  bring  order  out  of  the  confusion  of  feeling 
produced  in  him. 

His  mind  had  been  disturbed  enough  before.  All 
day,  through  the  routine  of  work  at  the  mills,  he  had 
laboured  inwardly  with  the  difficulties  confronting  him; 
and  his  unrest  had  been  increased  by  the  fact  that  his 
situation  bore  an  ironic  likeness  to  that  in  which,  from 
a  far  different  cause,  he  had  found  himself  at  the  other 
crisis  of  his  life.  Once  more  he  was  threatened  with 
the  possibility  of  having  to  give  up  Westmore,  at  a  mo- 
ment when  concentration  of  purpose  and  persistency 
of  will  were  at  last  beginning  to  declare  themselves  in 
tangible  results.  Before,  he  had  only  given  up 
dreams;  now  it  was  their  fruition  that  he  was  asked 
to  surrender.  And  he  was  fixed  in  his  resolve  to 
withdraw  absolutely  from  Westmore  if  the  statement 
he  had  to  make  to  Mr.  Langhope  was  received  with  the 
least  hint  of  an  offensive  mental  reservation.  All  forms 
[  558  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

of  moral  compromise  had  always  been  difficult  to  Am- 
herst,  and  like  many  men  absorbed  in  large  and  com- 
plicated questions  he  craved  above  all  clearness  and 
peace  in  his  household  relation.  The  first  months  of 
his  second  marriage  had  brought  him,  as  a  part  of 
richer  and  deeper  joys,  this  enveloping  sense  of  a  clear 
moral  medium,  in  which  no  subterfuge  or  equivocation 
could  draw  breath.  He  had  felt  that  henceforth  he 
could  pour  into  his  work  all  the  combative  energy,  the 
powers  of  endurance,  resistance,  renovation,  which  had 
once  been  unprofitably  dissipated  in  the  vain  attempt 
to  bring  some  sort  of  harmony  into  life  with  Bessy. 
Between  himself  and  Justine,  apart  from  their  love  for 
each  other,  there  was  the  wider  passion  for  their  kind, 
which  gave  back  to  them  an  enlarged  and  deepened  re- 
flection of  their  personal  feeling.  In  such  an  air  it  had 
seemed  that  no  petty  egotism  could  hamper  their  growth, 
no  misintelligence  obscure  their  love;  yet  all  the  while 
this  pure  happiness  had  been  unfolding  against  a  sor- 
did background  of  falsehood  and  intrigue  from  which 
his  soul  turned  with  loathing. 

Justine  was  right  in  assuming  that  Amherst  had  never 
thought  much  about  women.  He  had  vaguely  regarded 
them  as  meant  to  people  that  hazy  domain  of  feeling  de- 
signed to  offer  the  busy  man  an  escape  from  thought. 
His  second  marriage,  leading  him  to  the  blissful  dis- 
covery that  woman  can  think  as  well  as  feel,  that  there 
[  559  1 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

are  beings  of  the  ornamental  sex  in  whom  brain  and 
heart  have  so  enlarged  each  other  that  their  emotions 
are  as  clear  as  thought,  their  thoughts  as  warm  as  emo- 
tions— this  discovery  had  had  the  effect  of  making  him 
discard  his  former  summary  conception  of  woman  as 
a  bundle  of  inconsequent  impulses,  and  admit  her  at  a 
stroke  to  full  mental  equality  with  her  lord.  The  re- 
sult of  this  act  of  manumission  was,  that  in  judging 
Justine  he  could  no  longer  allow  for  what  was  purely 
feminine  in  her  conduct.  It  was  incomprehensible  to 
him  that  she,  to  whom  truth  had  seemed  the  essential 
element  of  life,  should  have  been  able  to  draw  breath, 
and  find  happiness,  in  an  atmosphere  of  falsehood  and 
dissimulation.  His  mind  could  assent — at  least  in  the 
abstract — to  the  reasonableness  of  her  act;  but  he  was 
still  unable  to  understand  her  having  concealed  it  from 
him.  He  could  enter  far  enough  into  her  feelings  to 
allow  for  her  having  kept  silence  on  his  first  return  to 
Lynbrook,  when  she  was  still  under  the  strain  of  a  pro- 
longed and  terrible  trial;  but  that  she  should  have  con- 
tinued to  do  so  when  he  and  she  had  discovered  and 
confessed  their  love  for  each  other,  threw  an  intolerable 
doubt  on  her  whole  course. 

He  stayed  late  at  the  mills,  finding  one  pretext  after 

another  for  delaying  his  return  to  Hanaford,  and  trying, 

while  he  gave  one  part  of  his  mind  to  the  methodical 

performance  of  his  task,  to  adjust  the  other  to  some 

[  560  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

definite  view  of  the  future.  But  all  was  darkened  and 
confused  by  the  sense  that,  between  himself  and  Justine, 
complete  communion  of  thought  was  no  longer  possible. 
It  had,  in  fact,  never  existed;  there  had  always  been  a 
locked  chamber  in  her  mind,  and  he  knew  not  yet  what 
other  secrets  might  inhabit  it. 

The  shock  of  finding  her  gone  when  he  reached  home 
gave  a  new  turn  to  his  feelings.  She  had  made  no 
mystery  of  her  destination,  leaving  word  with  the  ser- 
vants that  she  had  gone  to  town  to  see  Mr.  Langhope; 
and  Amherst  found  a  note  from  her  on  his  study 
table. 

"I  feel,"  she  wrote,  "that  I  ought  to  see  Mr.  Lang- 
hope  myself,  and  be  the  first  to  tell  him  what  must  be 
told.  It  was  like  you,  dearest,  to  wish  to  spare  me 
this,  but  it  would  have  made  me  more  unhappy;  and 
Mr.  Langhope  might  wish  to  hear  the  facts  in  my  own 
words.  I  shall  come  back  tomorrow,  and  after  that  it 
will  be  for  you  to  decide  what  must  be  done." 

The  brevity  and  simplicity  of  the  note  were  char- 
acteristic; in  moments  of  high  tension  Justine  was  al- 
ways calm  and  direct.  And  it  was  like  her,  too,  not  to 
make  any  covert  appeal  to  his  sympathy,  not  to  seek  to 
entrap  his  judgment  by  caressing  words  and  plaintive 
allusions.  The  quiet  tone  in  which  she  stated  her  pur- 
pose matched  the  firmness  and  courage  of  the  act,  and 
for  a  moment  Amherst  was  shaken  by  a  revulsion 
[  561  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

of  feeling.  Her  heart  was  level  with  his,  after  all — if 
she  had  done  wrong  she  would  bear  the  brunt  of  it 
alone.  It  was  so  exactly  what  he  himself  would  have 
felt  and  done  in  such  a  situation  that  faith  in  her  flowed 
back  through  all  the  dried  channels  of  his  heart.  But 
an  instant  later  the  current  set  the  other  way.  The 
wretched  years  of  his  first  marriage  had  left  in  him  a 
residue  of  distrust,  a  tendency  to  dissociate  every  act 
from  its  ostensible  motive.  He  had  been  too  pro- 
foundly the  dupe  of  his  own  enthusiasm  not  to  retain 
this  streak  of  scepticism,  and  it  now  moved  him 
to  ask  if  Justine's  sudden  departure  had  not  been 
prompted  by  some  other  cause  than  the  one  she  avowed. 
Had  that  alone  actuated  her,  why  not  have  told  it  to 
him,  and  asked  his  consent  to  her  plan  ?  Why  let  him 
leave  the  house  without  a  hint  of  her  purpose,  and  slip 
off  by  the  first  train  as  soon  as  he  was  safe  at  Westmore  ? 
Might  it  not  be  that  she  had  special  reasons  for  wishing 
Mr.  Langhope  to  hear  her  own  version  first, — that  there 
were  questions  she  wished  to  parry  herself,  explana- 
tions she  could  trust  no  one  to  make  for  her?  The 
thought  plunged  Amherst  into  deeper  misery.  He 
knew  not  how  to  defend  himself  against  these  disin- 
tegrating suspicions — he  felt  only  that,  once  the  accord 
between  two  minds  is  broken,  it  is  less  easy  to  restore 
than  the  passion  between  two  hearts.  He  dragged 
heavily  through  his  solitary  evening,  and  awaited  with 
[  562  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

dread  and  yet  impatience  a  message  announcing  his 
wife's  return. 

It  would  have  been  easier — far  easier — when  she  left 
Mr.  Langhope's  door,  to  go  straight  out  into  the  dark- 
ness and  let  it  close  in  on  her  for  good. 

Justine  felt  herself  yielding  to  the  spell  of  that 
suggestion  as  she  walked  along  the  lamplit  pavement, 
hardly  conscious  of  the  turn  her  steps  were  taking. 
The  door  of  the  house  which  a  few  weeks  before  had 
been  virtually  hers  had  closed  on  her  without  a  ques- 
tion. She  had  been  suffered  to  go  out  into  the  dark- 
ness without  being  asked  whither  she  was  going,  or 
under  what  roof  her  night  would  be  spent.  The  con- 
trast between  her  past  and  present  sounded  through 
the  tumult  of  her  thoughts  like  the  evil  laughter  of 
temptation.  The  house  at  Hanaford,  to  which  she 
was  returning,  would  look  at  her  with  the  same  alien 
face — nowhere  on  earth,  at  that  moment,  was  a  door 
which  would  open  to  her  like  the  door  of  home. 

In  her  painful  self-absorption  she  followed  the  side 
street  toward  Madison  Avenue,  and  struck  southward 
down  that  tranquil  thoroughfare.  There  was  a  physi- 
cal relief  in  rapid  motion,  and  she  walked  on,  still  hardly 
aware  of  her  direction,  toward  the  clustered  lights  of 
Madison  Square.  Should  she  return  to  Hanaford,  she 
had  still  several  hours  to  dispose  of  before  the  de- 
[  563  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

parture  of  the  midnight  train ;  and  if  she  did  not  return, 
hours  and  dates  no  longer  existed  for  her. 

It  would  be  easier — infinitely  easier — not  to  go  back. 
To  take  up  her  life  with  Amherst  would,  under  any 
circumstances,  be  painful  enough;  to  take  it  up  under 
the  tacit  restriction  of  her  pledge  to  Mr.  Langhope 
seemed  more  than  human  courage  could  face.  As  she 
approached  the  square  she  had  almost  reached  the 
conclusion  that  such  a  temporary  renewal  was  beyond 
her  strength — beyond  what  any  standard  of  duty  ex- 
acted. The  question  of  an  alternative  hardly  troubled 
her.  She  would  simply  go  on  living,  and  find  an  escape 
in  work  and  material  hardship.  It  would  not  be  hard 
for  so  inconspicuous  a  person  to  slip  back  into  the  ob- 
scure mass  of  humanity. 

She  paused  a  moment  on  the  edge  of  the  square, 
vaguely  seeking  a  direction  for  her  feet  that  might  per- 
mit the  working  of  her  thoughts  to  go  on  uninterrupted ; 
and  as  she  stood  there,  her  eyes  fell  on  the  bench  near 
the  corner  of  Twenty-sixth  Street,  where  she  had  sat 
with  Amherst  on  the  day  of  his  flight  from  Lynbrook. 
He  too  had  dreamed  of  escaping  from  insoluble  prob- 
lems into  the  clear  air  of  hard  work  and  simple  duties; 
and  she  remembered  the  words  with  which  she  had  turned 
him  back.  The  cases,  of  course,  were  not  identical, 
since  he  had  been  flying  in  anger  and  wounded  pride 
from  a  situation  for  which  he  was  in  no  wise  to  blame; 
[  564  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

yet,  if  even  at  such  a  moment  she  had  insisted  on  char- 
ity and  forbearance,  how  could  she  now  show  less  self- 
denial  than  she  had  exacted  of  him  ? 

"If  you  go  away  for  a  time,  surely  it  ought  to  be  in 
such  a  way  that  your  going  does  not  seem  to  cast  any 
reflection  on  Bessy. . ."  That  was  how  she  had  put  it 
to  him,  and  how,  with  the  mere  change  of  a  name,  she 
must  now,  for  reasons  as  cogent,  put  it  to  herself. 
It  was  just  as  much  a  part  of  the  course  she  had 
planned  to  return  to  her  husband  now,  and  take  up 
their  daily  life  together,  as  it  would,  later  on,  be  her 
duty  to  drop  out  of  that  life,  when  her  doing  so  could 
no  longer  involve  him  in  the  penalty  to  be  paid. 

She  stood  a  little  while  looking  at  the  bench  on  which 
they  had  sat,  and  giving  thanks  in  her  heart  for  the  past 
strength  which  was  now  helping  to  build  up  her  fail- 
ing courage:  such  a  patchwork  business  are  our  best 
endeavours,  yet  so  faithfully  does  each  weak  upward 
impulse  reach  back  a  hand  to  the  next. 

Justine's  explanation  of  her  visit  to  Mr.  Langhope 
was  not  wholly  satisfying  to  her  husband.  She  did  not 
conceal  from  him  that  the  scene  had  been  painful,  but 
she  gave  him  to  understand,  as  briefly  as  possible,  that 
Mr.  Langhope,  after  his  first  movement  of  uncontroll- 
able distress,  had  seemed  able  to  make  allowances  for 
the  pressure  under  which  she  had  acted,  and  that  he 
[  565  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

had,  at  any  rate,  given  no  sign  of  intending  to  let  her 
confession  make  any  change  in  the  relation  between  the 
households.  If  she  did  not — as  Amherst  afterward  re- 
called— put  all  this  specifically  into  words,  she  con- 
trived to  convey  it  in  her  manner,  in  her  allusions,  above 
all  in  her  recovered  composure.  She  had  the  demeanour 
of  one  who  has  gone  through  a  severe  test  of  strength, 
but  come  out  of  it  in  complete  control  of  the  situation. 
There  was  something  slightly  unnatural  in  this  prompt 
solution  of  so  complicated  a  difficulty,  and  it  had  the 
effect  of  making  Amherst  ask  himself  what,  to  produce 
such  a  result,  must  have  been  the  gist  of  her  com- 
munication to  Mr.  Langhope.  If  the  latter  had  shown 
any  disposition  to  be  cruel,  or  even  unjust,  Amherst's 
sympathies  would  have  rushed  instantly  to  his  wife's 
defence;  but  the  fact  that  there  was  apparently  to  be 
no  call  on  them  left  his  reason  free  to  compare  and 
discriminate,  with  the  final  result  that  the  more  he 
pondered  on  his  father-in-law's  attitude  the  less  intelli- 
gible it  became. 

A  few  days  after  Justine's  return  he  was  called  to 
New  York  on  business;  and  before  leaving  he  told  her 
that  he  should  of  course  take  the  opportunity  of  having 
a  talk  with  Mr.  Langhope. 

She  received  the  statement  with  the  gentle  composure 
from  which  she  had  not  departed  since  her  return  from 
town;  and  he  added  tentatively,  as  if  to  provoke  her  to 
[  566  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

a  clearer  expression  of  feeling:  "I  shall  not  be  satisfied, 
of  course,  till  I  see  for  myself  just  how  he  feels — just 
how  much,  at  bottom,  this  has  affected  him — since  my 
own  future  relation  to  him  will,  as  I  have  already  told 
you,  depend  entirely  on  his  treatment  of  you." 

She  met  this  without  any  sign  of  disturbance.  "His 
treatment  of  me  was  very  kind,"  she  said.  "  But  would 
it  not,  on  your  part,"  she  continued  hesitatingly,  "be 
kinder  not  to  touch  on  the  subject  so  soon  again?" 

The  line  deepened  between  his  brows.  "Touch  on 
it  ?  I  sha'n't  rest  till  I've  gone  to  the  bottom  of  it !  Till 
then,  you  must  understand,"  he  summed  up  with  de- 
cision, "I  feel  myself  only  on  sufferance  here  at  West- 
more." 

"Yes — I  understand,"  she  assented;  and  as  he  bent 
over  to  kiss  her  for  goodbye  a  tenuous  impenetrable 
barrier  seemed  to  lie  between  their  lips. 

It  was  Justine's  turn  to  await  with  a  passionate  anx- 
iety her  husband's  home-coming;  and  when,  on  the 
third  day,  he  reappeared,  her  dearly  acquired  self-con- 
trol gave  way  to  a  tremulous  eagerness.  This  was, 
after  all,  the  turning-point  in  their  lives :  everything  de- 
pended on  how  Mr.  Langhope  had  "played  up"  to  his 
cue,  had  kept  to  his  side  of  their  bond. 

Amherst's  face  showed  signs  of  emotional  havoc: 
when  feeling  once  broke  out  in  him  it  had  full  play. 
[567  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

and  she  could  see  that  his  hour  with  Mr.  Langhope  had 
struck  to  the  roots  of  life.  But  the  resultant  expression 
was  one  of  invigoration,  not  defeat;  and  she  gathered 
at  a  glance  that  her  partner  had  not  betrayed  her.  She 
drew  a  tragic  solace  from  the  success  of  her  achieve- 
ment; yet  it  flung  her  into  her  husband's  arms  with  a 
passion  of  longing  to  which,  as  she  instantly  felt,  he 
did  not  as  completely  respond. 

There  was  still,  then,  something  "between"  them: 
somewhere  the  mechanism  of  her  scheme  had  failed,  or 
its  action  had  not  produced  the  result  she  had  counted 
on. 

As  soon  as  they  were  alone  in  the  study  she  said,  as 
quietly  as  she  could:  "You  saw  your  father-in-law? 
You  talked  with  him?" 

"Yes — I  spent  the  afternoon  with  him.  Cicely  sent 
you  her  love." 

She  coloured  at  the  mention  of  the  child's  name  and 
murmured:  " And  Mr.  Langhope ?" 

"He  is  perfectly  calm  now — perfectly  impartial. — 
This  business  has  made  me  feel,"  Amherst  added 
abruptly,  "that  I  have  never  been  quite  fair  to  him.  I 
never  thought  him  a  magnanimous  man." 

"He  has  proved  himself  so,"  Justine  murmured,  her 
head  bent  low  over  a  bit  of  needlework;  and  Amherst 
affirmed  energetically:  "He  has  been  more  than  that 
— generous!" 

[  568  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

She  looked  up  at  him  with  a  smile.  "I  am  so  glad, 
dear:  so  glad  there  is  not  to  be  the  least  shadow  between 
you.  .  ." 

"No,"  Amherst  said,  his  voice  flagging  slightly. 
There  was  a  pause,  and  then  he  went  on  with  renewed 
emphasis:  "Of  course  I  made  my  point  clear  to  him." 

"Your  point?" 

"That  I  stand  or  fall  by  his  judgment  of  you." 

Oh,  if  he  had  but  said  it  more  tenderly!  But  he  de- 
livered it  with  the  quiet  resolution  of  a  man  who  con- 
tends for  an  abstract  principle  of  justice,  and  not  for  a 
passion  grown  into  the  fibres  of  his  heart! 

"You  are  generous  too,"  she  faltered,  her  voice 
trembling  a  little. 

Amherst  frowned;  and  she  perceived  that  any  hint, 
on  her  part,  of  recognizing  the  slightest  change  in  their 
relations  was  still  like  pressure  on  a  painful  bruise. 

"There  is  no  need  for  such  words  between  us,"  he 
said  impatiently;  "and  Mr.  Langhope's  attitude,"  he 
added,  with  an  effort  at  a  lighter  tone,  "has  made  it  un- 
necessary, thank  heaven,  that  we  should  ever  revert  to 
the  subject  again." 

He  turned  to  his  desk  as  he  spoke,  and  plunged  into 
perusal  of  the  letters  that  had  accumulated  in  his  absence. 

There  was  a  temporary  excess  of  work  at  Westmore, 

and  during  the  days  that  followed  he  threw  himself  into 

[  569  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

it  with  a  zeal  that  showed  Justine  how  eagerly  he  sought 
any  pretext  for  avoiding  confidential  moments.  The 
perception  was  painful  enough,  yet  not  as  painful  as 
another  discovery  that  awaited  her.  She  too  had  her 
tasks  at  Westmore:  the  supervision  of  the  hospital,  the 
day  nursery,  the  mothers'  club,  and  the  various  other 
organizations  whereby  she  and  Amherst  were  trying 
to  put  some  sort  of  social  unity  into  the  lives  of  the  mill- 
hands;  and  when,  on  the  day  after  his  return  from  New 
York,  she  presented  herself,  as  usual,  at  the  Westmore 
office,  where  she  was  in  the  habit  of  holding  a  brief  con- 
sultation with  him  before  starting  on  her  rounds,  she 
was  at  once  aware  of  a  new  tinge  of  constraint  in  his 
manner.  It  hurt  him,  then,  to  see  her  at  Westmore — 
hurt  him  more  than  to  live  with  her,  at  Hanaford,  under 
Bessy's  roof!  For  it  was  there,  at  the  mills,  that  his  real 
life  was  led,  the  life  with  which  Justine  had  been  most 
identified,  the  life  that  had  been  made  possible  for  both 
by  the  magnanimity  of  that  other  woman  whose  pres- 
ence was  now  forever  between  them. 

Justine  made  no  sign.  She  resumed  her  work  as 
though  unconscious  of  any  change;  but  whereas  in  the 
past  they  had  always  found  pretexts  for  seeking  each 
other  out,  to  discuss  the  order  of  the  day's  work,  or 
merely  to  warm  their  hearts  by  a  rapid  word  or  two, 
now  each  went  a  separate  way,  sometimes  not  meeting 
till  they  regained  the  house  at  night-fall. 
[  570  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

And  as  the  weeks  passed  she  began  to  understand 
that,  by  a  strange  inversion  of  probability,  the  relation 
between  Amherst  and  herself  was  to  be  the  means  of 
holding  her  to  her  compact  with  Mr.  Langhope — if 
indeed  it  were  not  nearer  the  truth  to  say  that  it  had 
made  such  a  compact  unnecessary.  Amherst  had 
done  his  best  to  take  up  their  life  together  as  though 
there  had  been  no  break  in  it;  but  slowly  the  fact  was 
being  forced  on  her  that  by  remaining  with  him  she 
was  subjecting  him  to  intolerable  suffering — was  com- 
ing to  be  the  personification  of  the  very  thoughts  and 
associations  from  which  he  struggled  to  escape.  Hap- 
pily her  promptness  of  action  had  preserved  Westmore 
to  him,  and  in  Westmore  she  believed  that  he  would  in 
time  find  a  refuge  from  even  the  memory  of  what  he 
was  now  enduring.  But  meanwhile  her  presence  kept 
the  thought  alive;  and,  had  every  other  incentive  lost 
its  power,  this  would  have  been  enough  to  sustain  her. 
Fate  had,  ironically  enough,  furnished  her  with  an  un- 
answerable reason  for  leaving  Amherst;  the  impossi- 
bility of  their  keeping  up  such  a  relation  as  now  existed 
between  them  would  soon  become  too  patent  to  be  de- 
nied. 

Meanwhile,  as  summer  approached,  she  knew  that 

external  conditions  would  also  call  upon  her  to  act. 

The  visible  signal  for  her  withdrawal  would  be  Cicely's 

next  visit  to  Westmore.     The  child's  birthday  fell  in 

[571} 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

early  June;  and  Amherst,  some  months  previously,  had 
asked  that  she  should  be  permitted  to  spend  it  at  Hana- 
ford,  and  that  it  should  be  chosen  as  the  date  for  the 
opening  of  the  first  model  cottages  at  Hope  wood. 

It  was  Justine  who  had  originated  the  idea  of  asso- 
ciating Cicely's  anniversaries  with  some  significant  mo- 
ment in  the  annals  of  the  mill  colony;  and  struck  by  the 
happy  suggestion,  he  had  at  once  applied  himself  to 
hastening  on  the  work  at  Hopewood.  The  eagerness 
of  both  Amherst  and  Justine  that  Cicely  should  be 
identified  with  the  developing  life  of  Westmore  had 
been  one  of  the  chief  influences  in  reconciling  Mr. 
Langhope  to  his  son-in-law's  second  marriage.  Hus- 
band and  wife  had  always  made  it  clear  that  they  re- 
garded themselves  as  the  mere  trustees  of  the  West- 
more  revenues,  and  that  Cicely's  name  should,  as  early 
as  possible,  be  associated  with  every  measure  taken  for 
the  welfare  of  the  people.  But  now,  as  Justine  knew, 
the  situation  was  changed ;  and  Cicely  would  not  be  al- 
lowed to  come  to  Hanaford  until  she  herself  had  left  it. 
The  manifold  threads  of  divination  that  she  was  per- 
petually throwing  out  in  Amherst's  presence  told  her, 
without  word  or  sign  on  his  part,  that  he  also  awaited 
Cicely's  birthday  as  a  determining  date  in  their  lives. 
He  spoke  confidently,  and  as  a  matter  of  course,  of 
Mr.  Langhope's  bringing  his  grand-daughter  at  the 
promised  time;  but  Justine  could  hear  a  note  of  chal- 
{572] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

lenge  in  his  voice,  as  though  he  felt  that  Mr.  Langhope's 
sincerity  had  not  yet  been  put  to  the  test. 

As  the  time  drew  nearer  it  became  more  difficult  for 
her  to  decide  just  how  she  should  take  the  step  she  had 
determined  on.  She  had  no  material  anxiety  for  the 
future,  for  although  she  did  not  mean  to  accept  a  penny 
from  her  husband  after  she  had  left  him,  she  knew  it 
would  be  easy  for  her  to  take  up  her  nursing  again; 
and  she  knew  also  that  her  hospital  connections  would 
enable  her  to  find  work  in  a  part  of  the  country  far 
enough  distant  to  remove  her  entirely  from  his  life. 
But  she  had  not  yet  been  able  to  invent  a  reason  for 
leaving  that  should  be  convincing  enough  to  satisfy  him, 
without  directing  his  suspicions  to  the  truth.  As  she 
revolved  the  question  she  suddenly  recalled  an  exclama- 
tion of  Amherst's — a  word  spoken  as  they  entered  Mr. 
Langhope's  door,  on  the  fatal  afternoon  when  she  had 
found  Wyant's  letter  awaiting  her. 

"There's  nothing  you  can't  make  people  believe, 
you  little  Jesuit!" 

She  had  laughed  in  pure  joy  at  his  praise  of  her;  for 
every  bantering  phrase  had  then  been  a  caress.  But 
now  the  words  returned  with  a  sinister  meaning.  She 
knew  they  were  true  as  far  as  Amherst  was  concerned: 
in  the  arts  of  casuistry  and  equivocation  a  child  could 
have  outmatched  him,  and  she  had  only  to  exert  her 
will  to  dupe  him  as  deeply  as  she  pleased.  Well! 
[573] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

the  task  was  odious,  but  it  was  needful :  it  was  the  bitter- 
est part  of  her  expiation  that  she  must  deceive  him  once 
more  to  save  him  from  the  results  of  her  former  decep- 
tion. This  decision  once  reached,  every  nerve  in  her 
became  alert  for  an  opportunity  to  do  the  thing  and  have 
it  over ;  so  that,  whenever  they  were  alone  together,  she 
was  in  an  attitude  of  perpetual  tension,  her  whole  mind 
drawn  up  for  its  final  spring. 

The  decisive  word  came,  one  evening  toward  the  end 
of  May,  in  the  form  of  an  allusion  on  Amherst's  part 
to  Cicely's  approaching  visit.  Husband  and  wife  were 
seated  in  the  drawing-room  after  dinner,  he  with  a  book 
in  hand,  she  bending,  as  usual,  over  the  needlework 
which  served  at  once  as  a  pretext  for  lowered  eyes,  and 
as  a  means  of  disguising  her  fixed  preoccupation. 

"Have  you  worked  out  a  plan?"  he  asked,  laying 
down  his  book.  "It  occurred  to  me  that  it  would 
be  rather  a  good  idea  if  we  began  with  a  sort  of  festivity 
for  the  kids  at  the  day  nursery.  You  could  take  Cicely 
there  early,  and  I  could  bring  out  Mr.  Langhope  after 
luncheon.  The  whole  performance  would  probably 
tire  him  too  much." 

Justine  listened  with  suspended  thread.  "Yes — that 
seems  a  good  plan." 

"Will  you  see  about  the  details,  then?  You  know 
it's  only  a  week  off." 

"Yes,  I  know."  She  hesitated,  and  then  took  the 
[574] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

spring.  "I  ought  to  tell  y6u  John — that  I — I  think  I 
may  not  be  here.  .  ." 

He  raised  his  head  abruptly,  and  she  saw  the  blood 
mount  under  his  fair  skin.  "Not  be  here?"  he  ex- 
claimed. 

She  met  his  look  as  steadily  as  she  could.  "  I  think 
of  going  away  for  awhile." 

"Going  away?  Where?  What  is  the  matter — are 
you  not  well?" 

There  was  her  pretext — he  had  found  it  for  her! 
Why  should  she  not  simply  plead  ill-health?  After- 
ward she  would  find  a  way  of  elaborating  the  details 
and  making  them  plausible.  But  suddenly,  as  she  was 
about  to  speak,  there  came  to  her  the  feeling  which,  up 
to  one  fatal  moment  in  their  lives,  had  always  ruled 
their  intercourse — the  feeling  that  there  must  be  truth, 
and  absolute  truth,  between  them.  Absolute,  indeed,  it 
could  never  be  again,  since  he  must  never  know  of  the 
condition  exacted  by  Mr.  Langhope;  but  that,  at  the 
moment,  seemed  almost  a  secondary  motive  compared 
to  the  deeper  influences  that  were  inexorably  forcing 
them  apart.  At  any  rate,  she  would  trump  up  no 
trivial  excuse  for  the  step  she  had  resolved  on;  there 
should  be  truth,  if  not  the  whole  truth,  in  this  last  de- 
cisive hour  between  them. 

"Yes;  I  am  quite  well — at  least  my  body  is,"  she  said 
quietly.  "But  I  am  tired,  perhaps;  my  mind  has  been 
[575  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

going  round  too  long  in  the  same  circle."  She  paused 
for  a  brief  space,  and  then,  raising  her  head,  and 
looking  him  straight  in  the  eyes:  "Has  it  not  been  so 
with  you?"  she  asked. 

The  question  seemed  to  startle  Amherst.  He  rose 
from  his  chair  and  took  a  few  steps  toward  the  hearth, 
where  a  small  fire  was  crumbling  into  embers.  He 
turned  his  back  to  it,  resting  an  arm  on  the  mantel- 
shelf; then  he  said,  in  a  somewhat  unsteady  tone:  "I 
thought  we  had  agreed  not  to  speak  of  all  that  again." 

Justine  shook  her  head  with  a  fugitive  half-smile. 
"  I  made  no  such  agreement,  And  besides,  what  is  the 
use,  when  we  can  always  hear  each  other's  thoughts 
speak,  and  they  speak  of  nothing  else?" 

Amherst's  brows  darkened.  "It  is  not  so  with  mine," 
he  began;  but  she  raised  her  hand  with  a  silencing 
gesture. 

"I  know  you  have  tried  your  best  that  it  should  not 
be  so;  and  perhaps  you  have  succeeded  better  than  I. 
But  I  am  tired,  horribly  tired — I  want  to  get  away  from 
everything ! " 

She  saw  a  look  of  pain  in  his  eyes.  He  continued 
to  lean  against  the  mantel-shelf,  his  head  slightly  low- 
ered, his  unseeing  gaze  fixed  on  a  remote  scroll  in  the 
pattern  of  the  carpet;  then  he  said  in  a  low  tone:  "I 
can  only  repeat  again  what  I  have  said  before — that  I 
understand  why  you  did  what  you  did." 
[576] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Thank  you,"  she  answered,  in  the  same  tone. 

There  was  another  pause,  for  she  could  not  trust  her- 
self to  go  on  speaking;  and  presently  he  asked,  with  a 
tinge  of  bitterness  in  his  voice:  "That  does  not  satisfy 
you?" 

She  hesitated.  "It  satisfies  me  as  much  as  it  does 
you — and  no  more,"  she  replied  at  length. 

He  looked  up  hastily.     "What  dp  you  mean?" 

"  Just  what  I  say.  We  can  neither  of  us  go  on  living 
on  that  understanding  just  at  present."  She  rose  as 
she  spoke,  and  crossed  over  to  the  hearth.  "I  want  to 
go  back  to  my  nursing — to  go  out  to  Michigan,  to  a 
town  where  I  spent  a  few  months  the  year  before  I  first 
came  to  Hanaford.  I  have  friends  there,  and  can  get 
work  easily.  And  you  can  tell  people  that  I  was  ill 
and  needed  a  change." 

It  had  been  easier  to  say  than  she  had  imagined,  and 
her  voice  held  its  clear  note  till  the  end;  but  when  she 
had  ceased,  the  whole  room  began  to  reverberate  with 
her  words,  and  through  the  clashing  they  made  in  her 
brain  she  felt  a  sudden  uncontrollable  longing  that  they 
should  provoke  in  him  a  cry  of  protest,  of  resistance. 
Oh,  if  he  refused  to  let  her  go — if  he  caught  her  to  him, 
and  defied  the  world  to  part  them — what  then  of  her 
pledge  to  Mr.  Langhope,  what  then  of  her  resolve  to 
pay  the  penalty  alone  ? 

But  in  the  space  of  a  heart-beat  she  knew  that  peril 
[  577  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

— that  longed-for  peril! — was  past.  Her  husband  had 
remained  silent — he  neither  moved  toward  her  nor 
looked  at  her;  and  she  felt  in  every  slackening  nerve  that 
in  the  end  he  would  let  her  go. 


XL 


MR.  LANGHOPE,  tossing  down  a   note  on  Mrs. 
Ansell's  drawing-room  table,  commanded  im- 
periously:  "Read  that!" 

She  set  aside  her  tea-cup,  and  looked  up,  not  at  the 
note,  but  into  his  face,  which  was  crossed  by  one  of 
the  waves  of  heat  and  tremulousness  that  she  was 
beginning  to  fear  for  him.  Mr.  Langhope  had  changed 
greatly  in  the  last  three  months;  and  as  he  stood  there 
in  the  clear  light  of  the  June  afternoon  it  came  to  her 
that  he  had  at  last  suffered  the  sudden  collapse  which 
is  the  penalty  of  youth  preserved  beyond  its  time. 

"What  is  it?"  she  asked,  still  watching  him  as  she 
put  out  her  hand  for  the  letter. 

"Amherst  writes  to  remind  me  of  my  promise  to 
take  Cicely  to  Hanaford  next  week,  for  her  birthday." 

"Well — it  was  a  promise,  wasn't  it?"  she  rejoined, 
running  her  eyes  over  the  page. 

"A  promise — yes;    but  made  before.  .  .  Read  the 
note — you'll  see  there's  no  reference  to  his  wife.     For 
ah1  I  know,  she'll  be  there  to  receive  us." 
[  578  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"But  that  was  a  promise  too." 

"That  neither  Cicely  nor  I  should  ever  set  eyes  on 
her?  Yes.  But  why  should  she  keep  it?  I  was  a 
fool  that  day — she  fooled  me  as  she's  fooled  us  all! 
But  you  saw  through  it  from  the  beginning — you  said 
at  once  that  she'd  never  leave  him." 

Mrs.  Ansell  reflected.  "I  said  that  before  I  knew  all 
the  circumstances.  Now  I  think  differently." 

"You  think  she  still  means  to  go?" 

She  handed  the  letter  back  to  him.  "I  think  this  is 
to  tell  you  so." 

"This  ? "  He  groped  for  his  glasses,  dubiously  scan- 
ning the  letter  again. 

"Yes.  And  what's  more,  if  you  refuse  to  go  she'll 
have  every  right  to  break  her  side  of  the  agreement." 

Mr.  Langhope  sank  into  a  chair,  steadying  himself 
painfully  with  his  stick.  "Upon  my  soul,  I  sometimes 
think  you're  on  her  side!"  he  ejaculated. 

"No — but  I  like  fair  play,"  she  returned,  measuring 
his  tea  carefully  into  his  favourite  little  porcelain  tea- 
pot. 

"Fair  play?" 

"She's  offering  to  do  her  part.  It's  for  you  to  do 
yours  now — to  take  Cicely  to  Hanaford." 

"If  I  find  her  there,  I  never  cross  Amherst's  threshold 


again 


Mrs.  Ansell,  without  answering,  rose  and  put  his  tea- 

[579  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

cup  on  the  slender-legged  table  at  his  elbow;  then, 
before  returning  to  her  seat,  she  found  the  enamelled 
match-box  and  laid  it  by  the  cup.  It  was  becoming 
difficult  for  Mr.  Langhope  to  guide  his  movements 
about  her  small  encumbered  room;  and  he  had  always 
liked  being  waited  on 

Mrs.  AnselTs  prognostication  proved  correct  When 
Mr.  Langhope  and  Cicely  arrived  at  Hanaford  they 
found  Amherst  alone  to  receive  them.  He  explained 
briefly  that  his  wife  had  been  unwell,  and  had  gone  to 
seek  rest  and  change  at  the  house  of  an  old  friend  in 
the  west.  Mr.  Langhope  expressed  a  decent  amount 
of  regret,  and  the  subject  was  dropped  as  if  by  common 
consent.  Cicely,  however,  was  not  so  easily  silenced. 
Poor  Bessy's  uncertain  fits  of  tenderness  had  produced 
more  bewilderment  than  pleasure  in  her  sober-minded 
child;  but  the  little  girl's  feelings  and  perceptions  had 
developed  rapidly  in  the  equable  atmosphere  of  her 
step-mother's  affection.  Cicely  had  reached  the  age 
when  children  put  their  questions  with  as  much  in- 
genuity as  persistence,  and  both  Mr.  Langhope  and 
Amherst  longed  for  Mrs.  Ansell's  aid  in  parrying  her 
incessant  interrogations  as  to  the  cause  and  length  of 
Justine's  absence,  what  she  had  said  before  going, 
and  what  promise  she  had  made  about  coming  back. 
But  Mrs.  Ansell  had  not  come  to  Hanaford.  Though 
[  580  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

it  had  become  a  matter  of  habit  to  include  her  in  the 
family  pilgrimages  to  the  mills  she  had  firmly  main- 
tained the  plea  of  more  urgent  engagements;  and  the 
two  men,  with  only  Cicely  between  them,  had  spent 
the  long  days  and  longer  evenings  in  unaccustomed  and 
unmitigated  propinquity. 

Mr.  Langhope,  before  leaving,  thought  it  proper  to 
touch  tentatively  on  his  promise  of  giving  Cicely  to 
Amherst  for  the  summer;  but  to  his  surprise  the  latter, 
after  a  moment  of  hesitation,  replied  that  he  should 
probably  go  to  Europe  for  two  or  three  months. 

"To  Europe?  Alone?"  escaped  from  Mr.  Lang- 
hope  before  he  had  time  to  weigh  his  words. 

Amherst  frowned  slightly.  "I  have  been  made  a 
delegate  to  the  Berne  conference  on  the  housing  of 
factory  operatives,"  he  said  at  length,  without  making 
a  direct  reply  to  the  question;  "and  if  there  is 
nothing  to  keep  me  at  Westmore,  I  shall  probably 
go  out  in  July.'  He  waited  a  moment,  and  then 
added:  "My  wife  has  decided  to  spend  the  summer 
in  Michigan." 

Mr.  Langhope's  answer  was  a  vague  murmur  of 
assent,  and  Amherst  turned  the  talk  to  other  matters. 

Mr.  Langhope  returned  to  town  with  distinct  views  on 
the  situation  at  Hanaford. 

"Poor  devil — I'm  sorry  for  him:  he  can  hardly  speak 
[581  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

of  her,"  he  broke  out  at  once  to  Mrs.  Ansell,  in  the 

course  of  their  first  confidential  hour  together. 

"Because  he  cares  too  much  —  he's  too  unhappy?" 
"Because  he  loathes  her!"  Mr.  Langhope  brought 

out  with  emphasis. 

Mrs.  Ansell  drew  a  deep  sigh  which  made  him  add 

accusingly:   "I  believe  you're  actually  sorry!" 

"Sorry?"     She  raised  her  eye-brows  with  a  slight 

smile.     "Should   one  not  always   be   sorry   to  know 

there's  a  little  less  love  and  a  little  more  hate  in  the 

world?" 

"You'll  be  asking  me  not  to  hate  her  next!" 

She  still  continued  to  smile  on  him.     "It's  the  haters, 

not  the  hated,  I'm  sorry  for,"  she  said  at  length;   and 

he  flung  back  impatiently:  "Oh,  don't  let's  talk  of  her. 

I  sometimes  feel  she  takes  up  more  place  in  our  lives 

than  when  she  was  with  us!" 

Amherst  went  to  the  Berne  conference  in  July,  and 
spent  six  weeks  afterward  in  rapid  visits  to  various 
industrial  centres  and  model  factory  villages.  During 
his  previous  European  pilgrimages  his  interest  had  by 
no  means  been  restricted  to  sociological  questions: 
the  appeal  of  an  old  civilization,  reaching  him  through 
its  innumerable  forms  of  tradition  and  beauty,  had 
roused  that  side  of  his  imagination  which  his  work  at 
home  left  untouched.  But  upon  his  present  state  of 
[  582  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

deep  moral  commotion  the  spells  of  art  and  history  were 
powerless  to  work.  The  foundations  of  his  life  had 
been  shaken,  and  the  fair  exterior  of  tne  world  was  as 
vacant  as  a  maniac's  face.  He  could  only  take  refuge 
in  his  special  task,  barricading  himself  against  every 
expression  of  beauty  and  poetry  as  so  many  poignant 
reminders  of  a  phase  of  life  that  he  was  vainly  trying  to 
cast  off  and  forget.  , 

Even  his  work  had  been  embittered  to  him,  thrust 
out  of  its  place  in  the  ordered  scheme  of  things.  It 
had  cost  him  a  hard  struggle  to  hold  fast  to  his  main 
purpose,  to  convince  himself  that  his  real  duty  lay,  not 
in  renouncing  the  Westmore  money  and  its  obligations, 
but  in  carrying  out  his  projected  task  as  if  nothing 
had  occurred  to  affect  his  personal  relation  to  it.  The 
mere  fact  that  such  a  renunciation  would  have  been 
a  deliberate  moral  suicide,  a  severing  once  for  all  of 
every  artery  of  action,  made  it  take  on,  at  first,  the 
semblance  of  an  obligation,  a  sort  of  higher  duty  to 
the  abstract  conception  of  what  he  owed  himself.  But 
Justine  had  not  erred  in  her  forecast  Once  she  had 
passed  out  of  his  life,  it  was  easier  for  him  to  return 
to  a  dispassionate  view  of  his  situation,  to  see,  and 
boldly  confess  to  himself  that  he  saw,  the  still  higher 
duty  of  sticking  to  his  task,  instead  of  sacrificing  it  to 
any  ideal  of  personal  disinterestedness.  It  was  this 
gradual  process  of  adjustment  that  saved  him  from  the 
[  583  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

desolating  scepticism  which  falls  on  the  active  man 
when  the  sources  of  his  activity  are  tainted.  Having 
accepted  his  fate,  having  consented  to  see  in  himself 
merely  the  necessary  agent  of  a  good  to  be  done,  he 
could  escape  from  self -questioning  only  by  shutting 
himself  up  in  the  practical  exigencies  of  his  work, 
closing  his  eyes  and  his  thoughts  to  everything  which 
had  formerly  related  it  to  a  wider  world,  had  given 
meaning  and  beauty  to  life  as  a  whole. 

The  return  from  Europe,  and  the  taking  up  of  the 
daily  routine  at  Hanaford,  were  the  most  difficult 
phases  in  this  process  of  moral  adaptation. 

Justine's  departure  had  at  first  brought  relief.  He 
had  been  too  sincere  with  himself  to  oppose  her  wish  to 
leave  Hanaford  for  a  time,  since  he  believed  that,  for 
her  as  well  as  for  himself,  a  temporary  separation 
would  be  less  painful  than  a  continuance  of  their 
actual  relation.  But  as  the  weeks  passed  into  months 
he  found  he  was  no  nearer  to  a  clear  view  of  his  own 

• 

case:  the  future  was  still  dark  and  enigmatic.  Jus- 
tine's desire  to  leave  him  had  revived  his  unformulated 
distrust  of  her.  What  could  it  mean  but  that  there 
were  thoughts  within  her  which  could  not  be  at  rest 
in  his  presence?  He  had  given  her  every  proof  of  his 
wish  to  forget  the  past,  and  Mr.  Langhope  had  be- 
haved with  unequalled  magnanimity.  Yet  Justine's 
unhappiness  was  evident:  she  could  not  conceal  her 
[584  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

longing  to  escape  from  the  conditions  her  act  had 
created.  Was  it  because,  in  reality,  she  was  conscious 
of  other  motives  than  the  one  she  acknowledged  ?  She 
had  insisted,  almost  unfeelingly  as  it  might  have 
seemed,  on  the  abstract  Tightness  of  what  she  had 
done,  on  the  fact  that,  ideally  speaking,  her  act  could 
not  be  made  less  right,  less  justifiable,  by  the  special 
accidental  consequences  that  had  flowed  from  it.  Be- 
cause these  consequences  had  caught  her  in  a  web 
of  tragic  fatality  she  would  not  be  guilty  of  the  weak- 
ness of  tracing  back  the  disaster  to  any  intrinsic  error 
in  her  original  motive.  Why,  then,  if  this  was  her 
real,  her  proud  attitude  toward  the  past — and  since 
those  about  her  believed  in  her  sincerity,  and  accepted 
her  justification  as  valid  from  her  point  of  view  if  not 
from  theirs — why  had  she  not  been  able  to  maintain 
her  posture,  to  carry  on  life  on  the  terms  she  had 
exacted  from  others  ? 

A  special  circumstance  contributed  to  this  feeling  of 
distrust;  the  fact,  namely,  that  Justine,  a  week  after 
her  departure  from  Hanaford,  had  written  to  say  that 
she  could  not,  from  that  moment  till  her  return,  con- 
sent to  accept  any  money  from  Amherst.  As  her 
manner  was,  she  put  her  reasons  clearly  and  soberly, 
without  evasion  or  ambiguity. 

"Since  you  and  I,"  she  wrote,  "have  always  agreed 
in  regarding  the  Westmore  money  as  a  kind  of  wage 
[  585  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

for  our  services  at  the  mills,  I  cannot  be  satisfied  to 
go  on  drawing  that  wage  while  I  am  unable  to  do  any 
work  in  return.  I  am  sure  you  must  feel  as  I  do  about 
this;  and  you  need  have  no  anxiety  as  to  the  practical 
side  of  the  question,  since  I  have  enough  to  live  on  in 
some  savings  from  my  hospital  days,  which  were  in- 
vested for  me  two  years  ago  by  Harry  Dressel,  and 
are  beginning  to  bring  in  a  small  return.  This  being 
the  case,  I  feel  I  can  afford  to  interpret  in  any  way  I 
choose  the  terms  of  the  bargain  between  myself  and 
Westmore." 

On  reading  this,  Amherst's  mind  had  gone  through 
the  strange  dual  process  which  now  marked  all  his 
judgments  of  his  wife.  At  first  he  had  fancied  he 
understood  her,  and  had  felt  that  he  should  have  done 
as  she  did;  then  the  usual  reaction  of  distrust  set  in, 
and  he  asked  himself  why  she,  who  had  so  little  of  the 
conventional  attitude  toward  money,  should  now  de- 
velop this  unexpected  susceptibility.  And  so  the  old 
question  presented  itself  in  another  shape:  if  she  had 
nothing  to  reproach  herself  for,  why  was  it  intolerable 
to  her  to  live  on  Bessy's  money?  The  fact  that  she 
was  doing  no  actual  service  at  Westmore  did  not  ac- 
count for  her  scruples — she  would  have  been  the  last 
person  to  think  that  a  sick  servant  should  be  docked 
of  his  pay.  Her  reluctance  could  come  only  from  that 
hidden  cause  of  compunction  which  had  prompted  her 
[  586  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

departure,  and  which  now  forced  her  to  sever  even 
the  merely  material  links  between  herself  and  her  past. 

Amherst,  on  his  return  to  Hanaford,  had  tried  to 
find  in  these  considerations  a  reason  for  his  deep  un- 
rest. It  was  his  wife's  course  which  still  cast  a  tor- 
turing doubt  on  what  he  had  braced  his  will  to  accept 
and  put  behind  him.  And  he  now  told  himself  that 
the  perpetual  galling  sense  of  her  absence  was  due  to 
this  uneasy  consciousness  of  what  it  meant,  of  the  dark 
secrets  it  enveloped  and  held  back  from  him.  In 
actual  truth,  every  particle  of  his  being  missed  her,  he 
lacked  her  at  every  turn.  She  had  been  at  once  the 
partner  of  his  task,  and  the  pays  bleu  into  which  he 
escaped  from  it;  the  vivifying  thought  which  gave 
meaning  to  the  life  he  had  chosen,  yet  never  let  him 
forget  that  there  was  a  larger  richer  life  outside,  to 
which  he  was  rooted  by  deeper  and  more  intrinsic 
things  than  any  abstract  ideal  of  altruism.  His  love 
had  preserved  his  identity,  saved  him  from  shrinking 
into  the  mere  nameless  unit  which  the  social  enthusiast 
is  in  danger  of  becoming  unless  the  humanitarian  pas- 
sion is  balanced,  and  a  little  overweighed,  by  a  merely 
human  one.  And  now  this  equilibrium  was  lost  for- 
ever, and  his  deepest  pain  lay  in  realizing  that  he 
could  not  regain  it,  even  by  casting  off  Westmore  and 
choosing  the  narrower  but  richer  individual  existence 
that  her  love  might  once  have  offered.  His  life  was  in 
[587] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

truth  one  indivisible  organism,  not  two  halves  arti- 
ficially united.  Self  and  other-self  were  ingrown  from 
the  roots — whichever  portion  fate  restricted  him  to 
would  be  but  a  mutilated  half-live  fragment  of  the 
whole. 

Happily  for  him,  chance  made  this  crisis  of  his  life 
coincide  with  a  strike  at  Westmore.  Soon  after  his 
return  to  Hanaford  he  found  himself  compelled  to 
grapple  with  the  hardest  problem  of  his  industrial 
career,  and  he  was  carried  through  the  ensuing  three 
months  on  that  tide  of  swift  obligatory  action  that 
sweeps  the  ship-wrecked  spirit  over  so  many  sunken 
reefs  of  fear  and  despair.  The  knowledge  that  he  was 
better  able  to  deal  with  the  question  than  any  one 
who  might  conceivably  have  taken  his  place — this  con- 
viction, which  was  presently  confirmed  by  the  peaceable 
adjustment  of  the  strike,  helped  to  make  the  sense  of 
his  immediate  usefulness  outbalance  that  other,  dis- 
integrating doubt  as  to  the  final  value  of  such  efforts. 
And  so  he  tried  to  settle  down  into  a  kind  of  mechanical 
altruism,  in  which  the  reflexes  of  habit  should  take  the 
place  of  that  daily  renewal  of  faith  and  enthusiasm 
which  had  been  fed  from  the  springs  of  his  own  joy. 

The  autumn  came  and  passed  into  winter-,    and  after 
Mr.   Langhope's    re-establishment   in    town    Amherst 
began  to  resume  his  usual  visits  to  hi?  step-daughter. 
I  588] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

His  natural  affection  for  the  little  girl  had  been 
deepened  by  the  unforeseen  manner  in  which  her  fate 
had  been  entrusted  to  him.  The  thought  of  Bessy, 
softened  to  compunction  by  the  discovery  that  her  love 
had  persisted  under  their  apparently  hopeless  estrange- 
ment— this  feeling,  intensified  to  the  verge  of  morbid- 
ness by  the  circumstances  attending  her  death,  now 
sought  expression  in  a  passionate  devotion  to  her  child. 
Accident  had,  in  short,  created  between  Bessy  and  him- 
self a  retrospective  sympathy  which  the  resumption  of 
life  together  would  have  dispelled  in  a  week — one  of  the 
exhalations  from  the  past  that  depress  the  vitality  of 
those  who  linger  too  near  the  grave  of  dead  experiences. 

Since  Justine's  departure  Amherst  had  felt  himself 
still  more  drawn  to  Cicely;  but  his  relation  to  the 
child  was  complicated  by  the  fact  that  she  would  not 
be  satisfied  as  to  the  cause  of  her  step-mother's  absence. 
Whenever  Amherst  came  to  town,  her  first  question  was 
for  Justine;  and  her  memory  had  the  precocious  per- 
sistence sometimes  developed  in  children  too  early  de- 
prived of  their  natural  atmosphere  of  affection.  Cicely 
had  always  been  petted  and  adored,  at  odd  times  and 
by  divers  people;  but  some  instinct  seemed  to  tell  her 
that,  of  all  the  tenderness  bestowed  on  her,  Justine's 
most  resembled  the  all-pervading  motherly  element  in 
which  the  child's  heart  expands  without  ever  being 
conscious  of  its  needs. 

[  589  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

If  it  had  been  embarrassing  to  evade  Cicely's  ques- 
tions in  June  it  became  doubly  so  as  the  months  passed, 
and  the  pretext  of  Justine's  ill-health  grew  more  and 
more  difficult  to  sustain.  And  in  the  following  March 
Amherst  was  suddenly  called  from  Hanaford  by  the 
news  that  the  little  girl  herself  was  ill.  Serious  com- 
plications had  developed  from  a  protracted  case  of 
scarlet  fever,  and  for  two  weeks  the  child's  fate  was 
uncertain.  Then  she  began  to  recover,  and  in  the  joy 
of  seeing  life  come  back  to  her,  Mr.  Langhope  and 
Amherst  felt  as  though  they  must  not  only  gratify-every 
wish  she  expressed,  but  try  to  guess  at  those  they  saw 
floating  below  the  surface  of  her  clear  vague  eyes. 

It  was  noticeable  to  Mrs.  Ansell,  if  not  to  the  others, 
that  one  of  these  unexpressed  wishes  was  the  desire  to 
see  her  stepmother.  Cicely  no  longer  asked  for  Jus- 
tine; but  something  in  her  silence,  or  in  the  gesture 
with  which  she  gently  put  from  her  other  offers  of 
diversion  and  companionship,  suddenly  struck  Mrs. 
Ansell  as  more  poignant  than  speech. 

"What  is  it  the  child  wants?"  she  asked  the  gover- 
ness, in  the  course  of  one  of  their  whispered  consulta- 
tions; and  the  governess,  after  a  moment's  hesitation, 
replied:  "She  said  something  about  a  letter  she  wrote 
to  Mrs.  Amherst  just  before  she  was  taken  ill — about 
having  had  no  answer,  I  think." 

"Ah — she  writes  to  Mrs.  Amherst,  does  she?" 
[  590  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

The  governess,  evidently  aware  that  she  trod  on 
delicate  ground,  tried  at  once  to  defend  herself  and  her 
pupil. 

"It  was  my  fault,  perhaps.  I  suggested  once  that 
her  little  compositions  should  take  the  form  of  letters 
— it  usually  interests  a  child  more — and  she  asked  if 
they  might  be  written  to  Mrs.  Amherst." 

"Your  fault?  Why  should  not  the  child  write  to 
her  step-mother?"  Mrs.  Ansell  rejoined  with  studied 
surprise;  and  on  the  other's  murmuring:  "Of  course 

— of  course "  she  added  haughtily:  "I  trust  the 

letters  were  sent?" 

The  governess  floundered.  "I  couldn't  say — but 
perhaps  the  nurse.  .  ." 

That  evening  Cicely  was  less  well.  There  was  a  slight 
return  of  fever,  and  the  doctor,  hastily  summoned, 
hinted  at  the  possibility  of  too  much  excitement  in  the 
sick-room. 

"Excitement?  There  has  been  no  excitement,"  Mr. 
Langhope  protested,  quivering  with  the  sudden  re- 
newal of  fear. 

"No?  The  child  seemed  nervous,  uneasy.  It's 
hard  to  say  why,  because  she  is  unusually  reserved  for 
her  age." 

The  medical  man  took  his  departure,  and  Mr.  Lang- 
hope  and  Mrs.  Ansell  faced  each  other  in  the  disarray 
[591] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

produced  by  a  call  to  arms  when  all  has  seemed  at 
peace. 

"I  shall  lose  her — I  shall  lose  her!"  the  grandfather 
broke  out,  sinking  into  his  chair  with  a  groan. 

Mrs.  Ansell,  gathering  up  her  furs  for  departure, 
turned  on  him  abruptly  from  the  threshold. 

"It's  stupid,  what  you're  doing — stupid!"  she  ex- 
claimed with  unwonted  vehemence. 

He  raised  his  head  with  a  startled  look.  "What  do 
you  mean — what  I'm  doing?" 

"The  child  misses  Justine.  You  ought  to  send  for 
her." 

Mr.  Langhope's  hands  dropped  to  the  arms  of  his 
chair,  and  he  straightened  himself  up  with  a  pale  flash 
of  indignation.  "You've  had  moments  lately !" 

"I've  had  moments,  yes;  and  so  have  you — when 
the  child  came  back  to  us,  and  we  stood  there  and  won- 
dered how  we  could  keep  her,  tie  her  fast.  .  .  and  in 
those  moments  I  saw.  .  .  saw  what  she  wanted.  .  . 
and  so  did  you!" 

Mr.  Langhope  turned  away  his  head.  "You're  a 
sentimentalist!"  he  flung  scornfully  back. 

"Oh,  oall  me  any  bad  names  you  please!" 

"I  won't  send  for  that  woman!" 

"No."  She  fastened  her  furs  slowly,  with  the  gentle 
deliberate  movements  that  no  emotion  ever  hastened 
or  disturbed. 

[592  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Why  do  you  say  no?"  he  challenged  her. 

"To  make  you  contradict  me,  perhaps,"  she  vent- 
ured, after  looking  at  him  again. 

"Ah "  He  shifted  his  position,  one  elbow  sup- 
porting his  bowed  head,  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  ground. 
Presently  he  brought  out:  "Could  one  ask  her  to 
come — and  see  the  child — and  go  away  again — for 
good?" 

"To  break  the  compact  at  your  pleasure,  and  enter 
into  it  again  for  the  same  reason  ?  " 

"No — no — I  see."  He  paused,  and  then  looked  up 
at  her  suddenly.  "But  what  if  Amherst  won't  have 
her  back  himself?" 

"Shall  I  ask  him?" 

"I  tell  you  he  can't  bear  to  hear  her  name!" 

"But  he  doesn't  know  why  she  has  left  him." 

Mr.  Langhope  gathered  his  brows  in  a  frown.  "Why 
— what  on  earth — what  possible  difference  would  that 
make?" 

Mrs.  Ansell,  from  the  doorway,  shed  a  pitying  glance 
on  him.  "Ah — if  you  don't  see!"  she  murmured. 

He  sank  back  into  his  seat  with  a  groan.  "Good 
heavens,  Maria,  how  you  torture  me!  I  see  enough 
as  it  is — I  see  too  much  of  the  cursed  business!" 

She  paused  again,  and  then  slowly  moved  a  step  or 
two  nearer,  laying  her  hand  on  his  shoulder. 

"There's  one  thing  you've  never  seen  yet,  Henry: 
[  593  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

what  Bessy  herself  would  do  now — for  the  child — if  she 
could." 

He  sat  motionless  under  her  light  touch,  his  eyes  on 
hers,  till  their  inmost  thoughts  felt  for  and  found  each 
other,  as  they  still  sometimes  could,  through  the  fog  of 
years  and  selfishness  and  worldly  habit;  then  he 
dropped  his  face  into  his  hands,  hiding  it  from  her  with 
the  instinctive  shrinking  of  an  aged  grief. 

XLI 

\  MHERST,  Cicely's  convalescence  once  assured, 
j[\.  had  been  obliged  to  go  back  to  Hanaford;  but 
some  ten  days  later,  on  hearing  from  Mrs.  Ansell  that 
the  little  girl's  progress  was  less  rapid  than  had  been 
hoped,  he  returned  to  his  father-in-law's  for  a  Sunday. 

He  came  two  days  after  the  talk  recorded  in  the  last 
chapter — a  talk  of  which  Mrs.  Ansell's  letter  to  him  had 
been  the  direct  result.  She  had  promised  Mr.  Lang- 
hope  that,  in  writing  to  Amherst,  she  would  not  go 
beyond  the  briefest  statement  of  fact;  and  she  had 
kept  her  word,  trusting  to  circumstances  to  speak  for 
her. 

Mrs.  Ansell,  during  Cicely's  illness,  had  formed  the 
habit  of  dropping  in  on  Mr.  Langhope  at  the  tea 
hour  instead  of  awaiting  him  in  her  own  drawing- 
room;  and  on  the  Sunday  in  question  she  found  him 
[  594  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

alone.  Beneath  his  pleasure  in  seeing  her,  which  had 
grown  more  marked  as  his  dependence  on  her  in- 
creased, she  at  once  discerned  traces  of  recent  disturb- 
ance; and  her  first  question  was  for  Cicely. 

He  met  it  with  a  discouraged  gesture.  "No  great 
change — Amherst  finds  her  less  well  than  when  he  was 
here  before." 

"He's  upstairs  with  her?" 

"Yes — she  seems  to  want  him." 

Mrs.  Ansell  seated  herself  in  silence  behind  the  tea- 
tray,  of  which  she  was  now  recognized  as  the  officiating 
priestess.  As  she  drew  off  her  long  gloves,  and  me- 
chanically straightened  the  row  of  delicate  old  cups, 
Mr.  Langhope  added  with  an  effort:  "I've  spoken  to 
him — told  him  what  you  said." 

She  looked  up  quickly. 

"About  the  child's  wish,"  he  continued.  "About 
her  having  written  to  his  wife.  It  seems  her  last  letters 
have  not  been  answered." 

He  paused,  and  Mrs.  Ansell,  with  her  usual  calm 
precision,  proceeded  to  measure  the  tea  into  the  fluted 
Georgian  tea-pot.  She  could  be  as  reticent  in  approval 
as  in  reprehension,  and  not  for  the  world  would  she 
have  seemed  to  claim  any  share  in  the  turn  that  events 
appeared  to  be  taking.  She  even  preferred  the  risk  of 
leaving  her  old  friend  to  add  half-reproachf ully :  "I 
told  Amherst  what  you  and  the  nurse  thought.' 
[  595  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Yes?" 

"That  Cicely  pines  for  his  wife.  I  put  it  to  him  in 
black  and  white."  The  words  came  out  on  a  deep 
strained  breath,  and  Mrs.  Ansell  faltered:  "Well?" 

"Well — he  doesn't  know  where  she  is  himself." 

"Doesn't  know?" 

"They're  separated — utterly  separated.  It's  as  I 
told  you:  he  could  hardly  name  her." 

Mrs.  Ansell  had  unconsciously  ceased  her  ministra- 
tions, letting  her  hands  fall  on  her  knee  while  she 
brooded  in  blank  wonder  on  her  companion's  face. 

"I  wonder  what  reason  she  could  have  given  him?" 
she  murmured  at  length. 

"  For  going  ?     He  loathes  her,  I  tell  you ! " 

"Yes — but  how  did  she  make  him?" 

He  struck  his  hand  violently  on  the  arm  of  his  chair. 
"Upon  my  soul,  you  seem  to  forget!" 

"No."  She  shook  her  head  with  a  half  smile.  "I 
simply  remember  more  than  you  do." 

"What  more?"  he  began  with  a  flush  of  anger;  but 
she  raised  a  quieting  hand. 

"What  does  all  that  matter — if,  now  that  we  need 
her,  we  can't  get  her?" 

He  made  no  answer,  and  she  returned  to  the  dis- 
pensing of  his  tea;    but  as  she  rose  to  put  the  cup  in 
his  hand  he  asked,  half  querulously:    "You  think  it's 
going  to  be  very  bad  for  the  child,  then?" 
[  596  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Mrs.  Ansell  smiled  with  the  thin  edge  of  her  lips. 
"One  can  hardly  set  the  police  after  her !" 

"No;  we're  powerless,"  he  groaned  in  assent. 

As  the  cup  passed  between  them  she  dropped  her 
eyes  to  his  with  a  quick  flash  of  interrogation;  but  he 
sat  staring  moodily  before  him,  and  she  moved  back 
to  the  sofa  without  a  word. 

On  the  way  downstairs  she  met  Amherst  descending 
from  Cicely's  room. 

Since  the  early  days  of  his  first  marriage  there  had 
always  been,  on  Amherst's  side,  a  sense  of  obscure  an- 
tagonism toward  Mrs.  Ansell.  She  was  almost  the 
embodied  spirit  of  the  world  he  dreaded  and  disliked: 
her  serenity,  her  tolerance,  her  adaptability,  seemed  to 
smile  away  and  disintegrate  all  the  high  enthusiasms, 
the  stubborn  convictions,  that  he  had  tried  to  plant  in 
the  shifting  sands  «of  his  married  life.  And  now  that 
Bessy's  death  had  given  her  back  the  attributes  with 
which  his  fancy  had  originally  invested  her,  he  had 
come  to  regard  Mrs.  Ansell  as  embodying  the  evil  in- 
fluences that  had  come  between  himself  and  his  wife. 

Mrs.  Ansell  was  probably  not  unaware  of  the  suc- 
cessive transitions  of  feeling  which  had  led  up  to  this 
unflattering  view;  but  her  life  had  been  passed  among 
petty  rivalries  and  animosities,  and  she  had  the  pa- 
tience and  adroitness  of  the  spy  in  a  hostile  camp. 
[597  ] 


She  and  Amherst  exchanged  a  few  words  about 
Cicely;  then  she  exclaimed,  with  a  glance  through  the 
panes  of  the  hall  door:  "But  I  must  be  off — I'm  on  foot, 
and  the  crossings  appal  me  after  dark." 

He  could  do  no  less,  at  that,  than  offer  to  guide  her 
across  the  perils  of  Fifth  Avenue;  and  still  talking  of 
Cicely,  she  led  him  down  the  thronged  thoroughfare  till 
her  own  corner  was  reached,  and  then  her  own  door; 
turning  there  to  ask,  as  if  by  an  afterthought:  "Won't 
you  come  up  ?  There's  one  thing  more  I  want  to  say." 

A  shade  of  reluctance  crossed  his  face,  which,  as  the 
vestibule  light  fell  on  it,  looked  hard  and  tired,  like  a 
face  set  obstinately  against  a  winter  gale;  but  he  mur- 
mured a  word  of  assent,  and  followed  her  into  the 
shining  steel  cage  of  the  lift. 

In  her  little  drawing-room,  among  the  shaded  lamps 
and  bowls  of  spring  flowers,  she  pushed  a  chair  forward, 
settled  herself  in  her  usual  corner  of  the  sofa,  and  said 
with  a  directness  that  seemed  an  echo  of  his  own  tone: 
"I  asked  you  to  come  up  because  I  want  to  talk  to  you 
about  Mr.  Langhope." 

Amherst  looked  at  her  in  surprise.  Though  his 
father-in-law's  health  had  been  more  or  less  unsatis- 
factory for  the  last  year,  all  their  concern,  of  late,  had 
been  for  Cicely. 

"You  think  him  less  well?"  he  enquired. 

She  waited  to  draw  off  and  smooth  her  gloves,  with 
[  598  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

one  of  the  deliberate  gestures  that  served  to  shade  and 
supplement  her  speech. 

"I  think  him  extremely  unhappy.'* 

Amherst  moved  uneasily  in  his  seat.  He  did  not 
know  where  she  meant  the  talk  to  lead  them,  but  he 
guessed  that  it  would  be  over  painful  places,  and  he 
saw  no  reason  why  he  should  be  forced  to  follow  her. 

"You  mean  that  he's  still  anxious  about  Cicely?" 

"Partly  that— yes."  She  paused.  "The  child  will 
get  well,  no  doubt;  but  she  is  very  lonely.  She  needs 
youth,  heat,  light.  Mr.  Langhope  can't  give  her  those, 
or  even  a  semblance  of  them;  and  it's  an  art  I've  lost 
the  secret  of,"  she  added  with  her  shadowy  smile. 

Amherst's  brows  darkened.  "I  realize  all  she  has 
lost " 

Mrs.  Ansell  glanced  up  at  him  quickly.  "She  is 
twice  motherless,"  she  said. 

The  blood  rose  to  his  neck  and  temples,  and  he 
tightened  his  hand  on  the  arm  of  his  chair.  But  it  was 
a  part  of  Mrs.  Ansell 's  expertness  to  know  when  such 
danger  signals  must  be  heeded  and  when  they  might  be 
ignored,  and  she  went  on  quietly:  "It's  the  question  of 
the  future  that  is  troubling  Mr.  Langhope.  After  such 
an  illness,  the  next  months  of  Cicely's  life  should  be 
all  happiness.  And  money  won't  buy  the  kind  she 
needs :  one  can't  pick  out  the  right  companion  for  such 
a  child  as  one  can  match  a  ribbon.  What  she  wants  is 
[  599  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

spontaneous  affection,  not  the  most  superlative  manu- 
factured article.  She  wants  the  sort  of  love  that  Jus- 
tine gave  her." 

It  was  the  first  time  in  months  that  Amherst  had 
heard  his  wife's  name  spoken  outside  of  his  own  house. 
No  one  but  his  mother  mentioned  Justine  to  him  now; 
and  of  late  even  his  mother  had  dropped  her  enquiries 
and  allusions,  prudently  acquiescing  in  the  habit  of 
silence  which  his  own  silence  had  created  about  him. 
To  hear  the  name  again — the  two  little  syllables  which 
had  been  the  key  of  life  to  him,  and  now  shook  him  as 
the  turning  of  a  rusted  lock  shakes  a  long-closed  door 
— to  hear  her  name  spoken  familiarly,  affectionately,  as 
one  speaks  of  some  one  who  may  come  into  the  room 
the  next  moment — gave  him  a  shock  that  was  half  pain, 
and  half  furtive  unacknowledged  joy.  Men  whose  con- 
scious thoughts  are  mostly  projected  outward,  on  the 
world  of  external  activities,  may  be  more  moved  by 
such  a  touch  on  the  feelings  than  those  who  are  per- 
petually testing  and  tuning  their  emotional  chords. 
Amherst  had  foreseen  from  the  first  that  Mrs.  Ansell 
might  mean  to  speak  of  his  wife;  but  though  he 
had  intended,  if  she  did  so,  to  cut  their  talk  short, 
he  now  felt  himself  irresistibly  constrained  to  hear 
her  out. 

Mrs.  Ansell,  having  sped  her  shaft,  followed  its  flight 
through  lowered  lashes,  and  saw  that  it  had  struck  a 
[  600  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

vulnerable  point;  but  she  was  far  from  assuming  that 
the  day  was  won.  « 

"I  believe,"  she  continued,  "that  Mr.  Langhope  has 
said  something  of  this  to  you  already,  and  my  only 
excuse  for  speaking  is  that  I  understood  he  had  not  been 
successful  in  his  appeal." 

No  one  but  Mrs.  Ansell — and  perhaps  she  knew  it — 
could  have  pushed  so  far  beyond  the  conventional  limits 
of  discretion  without  seeming  to  overstep  them  by  a 
hair;  and  she  had  often  said,  when  pressed  for  the 
secret  of  her  art,  that  it  consisted  simply  in  knowing 
the  pass-word.  That  word  once  spoken,  she  might  have 
added,  the  next  secret  was  to  give  the  enemy  no  time  for 
resistance;  and  though  she  saw  the  frown  reappear  be- 
tween Amherst's  eyes,  she  went  on,  without  heeding  it : 
"  I  entreat  you,  Mr.  Amherst,  to  let  Cicely  see  your  wife." 

He  reddened  again,  and  pushed  back  his  chair,  as 
if  to  rise. 

"No — don't  break  off  like  that!  Let  me  say  a  word 
more.  I  know  your  answer  to  Mr.  Langhope — that 
you  and  Justine  are  no  longer  together.  But  I  thought 
of  you  as  a  man  to  sink  your  personal  relations  at  such 
a  moment  as  this." 

"To  sink  them  ?"  he  repeated  vaguely:  and  she  went 
on:  "After  all,  what  difference  does  it  make?" 

"What  difference ?"  He  stared  in  unmitigated  won- 
der, and  then  answered,  with  a  touch  of  irony:  "It 
[  601  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

might  at  least  make  the  difference  of  my  being  unwill- 
ing to  ask  a  favour  of  her."  ' 

Mrs.  An  sell,  at  this,  raised  her  eyes  and  let  them  rest 
full  on  his.  "Because  she  has  done  you  so  great  a  one 
already?" 

He  stared  again,  sinking  back  automatically  into  his 
chair.  "I  don't  understand  you." 

"No."  She  smiled  a  little,  as  if  to  give  herself  time. 
"  But  I  mean  that  you  shall.  If  I  were  a  man  I  suppose 
I  couldn't,  because  a  man's  code  of  honour  is  such  a 
clumsy  cast-iron  thing.  But  a  woman's,  luckily,  can 
be  cut  over — if  she's  clever — to  fit  any  new  occasion; 
and  in  this  case  I  should  be  willing  to  reduce  mine  to 
tatters  if  necessary." 

Amherst's  look  of  bewilderment  deepened.  "What 
is  it  that  I  don't  understand?"  he  asked  at  length,  in 
a  low  voice. 

"  Well — first  of  all,  why  Mr.  Langhope  had  the  right 
to  ask  you  to  send  for  your  wife." 

"The  right?" 

"You  don't  recognize  such  a  right  on  his  part?" 

"No— why  should  I?" 

"Supposing  she  had  left  you  by  his  wish?" 

"His  wish?    His ?" 

He  was  on  his  feet  now,  gazing  at  her  blindly,  while 
the  solid  world  seemed  to  grow  thin  about  him.     Her 
next  words  reduced  it  to  a  mist. 
[  602  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"'My  poor  Amherst — why  else,  on  earth,  should  she 
have  left  you?" 

She  brought  it  out  clearly,  in  her  small  chiming  tones; 
and  as  the  sound  travelled  toward  him  it  seemed  to 
gather  momentum,  till  her  words  rang  through  his  brain 
as  if  every  incomprehensible  incident  in  the  past  had 
suddenly  boomed  forth  the  question.  Why  else,  in- 
deed, should  she  have  left  him  ?  He  stood  motionless 
for  a  while;  then  he  approached  Mrs.  Ansell  and  said: 
"Tell  me." 

She  drew  farther  back  into  her  corner  of  the  sofa, 
waving  him  to  a  seat  beside  her,  as  though  to  bring  his 
inquisitory  eyes  on  a  level  where  her  own  could  com- 
mand them;  but  he  stood  where  he  was,  unconscious 
of  her  gesture,  and  merely  repeating:  "Tell  me." 

She  may  have  said  to  herself  that  a  woman  would 
have  needed  no  farther  telling;  but  to  him  she  only 
replied,  slanting  her  head  up  to  hi.B:  "To  spare  you  and 
himself  pain — to  keep  everything,  between  himself  and 
you,  as  it  had  been  before  you  married  her." 

He  dropped  down  beside  her  at  that,  grasping  the 
back  of  the  sofa  as  if  he  wanted  something  to  clutch 
and  throttle.  The  veins  swelled  in  his  temples,  and  as 
he  pushed  back  his  tossed  hair  Mrs.  Ansell  noticed  for 
the  first  time  how  gray  it  had  grown  on  the  under  side. 

"And  he  asked  this  of  my  wife — he  accepted  it  ?"' 

"Haven't  you  accepted  it?" 
[  603  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 
"I?    How  could  I  guess  her  reasons — how  could  I 

•  •  •!»> 

imagine r 

Mrs.  Ansell  raised  her  brows  a  hair's  breadth  at 
that.  "I  don't  know.  But  as  a  fact,  he  didn't  ask — 
it  was  she  who  offered,  who  forced  it  on  him,  even!" 

"Forced  her  going  on  him?" 

"In  a  sense,  yes;  by  making  it  appear  that  you  felt 
as  he  did  about — about  poor  Bessy's  death:  that  the 
thought  of  what  had  happened  at  that  time  was  as 
abhorrent  to  you  as  to  him — that  she  was  as  abhorrent 
to  you.  No  doubt  she  foresaw  that,  had  she  permitted 
the  least  doubt  on  that  point,  there  would  have  been 
no  need  of  her  leaving  you,  since  the  relation  between 
yourself  and  Mr.  Langhope  would  have  been  altered — 
destroyed.  .  ." 

"Yes.  I  expected  that — I  warned  her  of  it.  But 
how  did  she  make  him  think ?" 

"How  can  I  tell?  To  begin  with,  I  don't  know 
your  real  feeling.  For  all  I  know  she  was  telling  the 
truth — and  Mr.  Langhope  of  course  thought  she  was." 

"That  I  abhorred  her?  Oh "  he  broke  out,  on 

his  feet  in  an  instant. 

"Then  why ?" 

"Why  did  I  let  her  leave  me  ? "     He  strode  across  the 

room,  as  his  habit  was  in  moments  of  agitation,  turning 

back  to  her  again  before  he  answered.     "Because  I 

didn't  know — didn't  know  anything!     And  because  her 

[  604  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

insisting  on  going  away  like  that,  without  any  explana- 
tion, made  me  feel.  .  .  imagine  there  was.  .  .  some- 
thing she  didn't  want  me  to  know.  .  .  something  she 
was  afraid  of  not  being  able  to  hide  from  me  if  we 
stayed  together  any  longer." 

"Well — there  was:  the  extent  to  which  she  loved 
you." 

Mrs.  Ansell,  her  hands  clasped  on  her  knee,  her  gaze 
holding  his  with  a  kind  of  visionary  fixity,  seemed  to 
[reconstruct  the  history  of  his  past,  bit  by  bit,  with  the 
words  she  was  dragging  out  of  him. 

"I  see  it — I  see  it  all  now,"  she  went  on,  with  a  re- 
pressed fervour  that  he  had  never  divined  in  her.  "It 
was  the  only  solution  for  her,  as  well  as  for  the  rest  of 
you.  The  more  she  showed  her  love,  the  more  it  would 
have  cast  a  doubt  on  her  motive.  .  .  the  greater  dis- 
tance she  would  have  put  between  herself  and  you. 
And  so  she  showed  it  in  the  only  way  that  was  safe  for 
both  of  you,  by  taking  herself  away  and  hiding  it  in 
her  heart;  and  before  going,  she  secured  your  peace  of 
mind,  your  future.  If  she  ruined  anything,  she  rebuilt 
the  ruin.  Oh,  she  paid — she  paid  in  full!" 

Justine  had  paid,  yes — paid  to  the  utmost  limit  of 
whatever  debt  toward  society  she  had  contracted  by 
overstepping  its  laws.  And  her  resolve  to  discharge  the 
debt  had  been  taken  in  a  flash,  as  soon  as  she  had  seen 
that  man  can  commit  no  act  alone,  whether  for  good  or 
[  605  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

evil.  The  extent  to  which  Amherst's  fate  was  involved 
in  hers  had  become  clear  to  her  with  his  first  word  of 
reassurance,  of  faith  in  her  motive.  And  instantly  a 
plan  for  releasing  him  had  leapt  full-formed  into  her 
mind,  and  had  been  carried  out  with  swift  unflinching 
resolution.  As  he  forced  himself,  now,  to  look  down 
the  suddenly  illuminated  past  to  the  weeks  which  had 
elapsed  between  her  visit  to  Mr.  Langhope  and  her  de- 
parture from  Hanaford,  he  wondered  not  so  much  at 
her  swiftness  of  resolve  as  at  her  firmness  in  carrying 
out  her  plan — and  he  saw,  with  a  blinding  flash  of  in- 
sight, that  it  was  in  her  love  for  him  that  she  had  found 
her  strength. 

In  all  moments  of  strong  mental  tension  he  became 
totally  unconscious  of  time  and  place,  and  he  now  re- 
mained silent  so  long,  his  hands  clasped  behind  him, 
his  eyes  fixed  on  an  indeterminate  point  in  space,  that 
Mrs.  Ansell  at  length  rose  and  laid  a  questioning  touch 
on  his  arm. 

"It's  not  true  that  you  don't  know  where  she  is  ?" 
His   face   contracted.     "At   this   moment   I   don't. 
Lately  she  has  preferred.  .  .  not  to  write.  .  ." 
"But  surely  you  must  know  how  to  find  her?" 
He  tossed  back  his  hair  with  an  energetic  movement. 
"I  should  find  her  if  I  didn't  know  how!" 

They  stood  confronted  in  a  gaze  of  silent  intensity, 
each  penetrating  farther  into  the  mind  of  the  other 
[  606  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

than  would  once  have  seemed  possible  to  either  one; 
then  Amherst  held  out  his  hand  abruptly.  "Good-bye 
— and  thank  you,"  he  said. 

She  detained  him  a  moment.  "We  shall  see  you 
soon  again — see  you  both?" 

His  face  grew  stern.  "It's  not  to  oblige  Mr.  Lang- 
hope  that  I  am  going  to  find  my  wife." 

"Ah,  now  you  are  unjust  to  him!"  she  exclaimed. 

"Don't  let  us  speak  of  him!"  he  broke  in. 

"Why  not?  When  it  is  from  him  the  request  comes 
— the  entreaty — that  everything  in  the  past  should  be 
forgotten  ?  " 

"Yes — when  it  suits  his  convenience!" 

"Do  you  imagine  that — even  judging  him  in  that 
way — it  has  not  cost  him  a  struggle  ?  " 

"I  can  only  think  of  what  it  has  cost  her!" 

Mrs.  Ansell  drew  a  deep  sighing  breath.  "Ah — 
but  don't  you  see  that  she  has  gained  her  point,  and 
that  nothing  else  matters  to  her  ?  " 

"Gained  her  point?  Not  if,  by  that,  you  mean 
that  things  here  can  ever  go  back  to  the  old  state 
— that  she  and  I  can  remain  at  Westmore  after 
this!" 

Mrs.  Ansell  dropped  her  eyes  for  a  moment;  then 
she  lifted  to  his  her  sweet  impenetrable  face. 

"Do  you  know  what  you  have  to  do — both  you  and 
he?     Exactly  what  she  decides,"  she  aflirmed 
[  607  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 
XLII 

JUSTINE'S  answer  to  her  husband's  letter  bore  a 
New  York  address;  and  the  surprise  of  finding 
her  in  the  same  town  with  himself,  and  not  half  an 
hour's  walk  from  the  room  in  which  he  sat,  was  so 
great  that  it  seemed  to  demand  some  sudden  and  violent 
outlet  of  physical  movement. 

He  thrust  the  letter  in  his  pocket,  took  up  his  hat, 
and  leaving  the  house,  strode  up  Fifth  Avenue  toward 
the  Park  in  the  early  spring  sunlight. 

The  news  had  taken  five  days  to  reach  him,  for  in 
order  to  reestablish  communication  with  his  wife  he 
had  been  obliged  to  write  to  Michigan,  with  the  request 
that  his  letter  should  be  forwarded.  He  had  never  sup- 
posed that  Justine  would  be  hard  to  find,  or  that  she 
had  purposely  enveloped  her  movements  in  mystery. 
When  she  ceased  to  write  he  had  simply  concluded 
that,  like  himself,  she  felt  the  mockery  of  trying  to 
keep  up  a  sort  of  distant,  semi-fraternal  relation, 
marked  by  the  occasional  interchange  of  inexpressive 
letters.  The  inextricable  mingling  of  thought  and  sen- 
sation which  made  the  peculiar  closeness  of  their  union 
could  never,  to  such  direct  and  passionate  natures,  be 
replaced  by  the  pretense  of  a  temperate  friendship. 
Feeling  thus  himself,  and  instinctively  assuming  the 
same  feeling  in  his  wife,  Amherst  had  respected  her 
[  608  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

silence,  her  wish  to  break  definitely  with  their  former 
life.  She  had  written  him,  in  the  autumn,  that  she 
intended  to  leave  Michigan  for  a  few  months,  but  that, 
in  any  emergency,  a  letter  addressed  to  her  friend's 
house  would  reach  her;  and  he  had  taken  this  as  mean- 
ing that,  unless  the  emergency  arose,  she  preferred  that 
their  correspondence  should  cease.  Acquiescence  was 
all  the  easier  because  it  accorded  with  his  own  desire. 
It  seemed  to  him,  as  he  looked  back,  that  the  love  he 
and  Justine  had  felt  for  each  other  was  like  some  rare 
organism  which  could  maintain  life  only  in  its  special 
element;  and  that  element  was  neither  passion  nor 
sentiment,  but  truth.  It  was  only  on  the  heights  that 
they  could  breathe. 

Some  men,  in  his  place,  even  while  accepting  thein- 
evitableness  of  the  moral  rupture,  would  have  felt  con- 
cerned for  the  material  side  of  the  case.  But  it  was 
characteristic  of  Amherst  that  this  did  not  trouble  him. 
He  took  it  for  granted  that  his  wife  would  return  to  her 
nursing.  From  the  first  he  had  felt  certain  that  it 
would  be  intolerable  to  her  to  accept  aid  from  him,  and 
that  she  would  choose  rather  to  support  herself  by  the 
exercise  of  her  regular  profession;  and,  aside  from  such 
motives,  he,  who  had  always  turned  to  hard  work  as 
the  surest  refuge  from  personal  misery,  thought  it  nat- 
ural that  she  should  seek  the  same  means  of  escape. 

He  had  therefore  not  been  surprised,  on  opening  her 
[  609  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

letter  that  morning,  to  learn  that  she  had  taken  up  her 
hospital  work;  but  in  the  amazement  of  finding  her 
so  near  he  hardly  grasped  her  explanation  of  the  coin- 
cidence. There  was  something  about  a  Buffalo  patient 
suddenly  ordered  to  New  York  for  special  treatment, 
and  refusing  to  go  in  with  a  new  nurse — but  these  de- 
tails made  no  impression  on  his  mind,  which  had  only 
room  for  the  fact  that  chance  had  brought  his  wife 
back  at  the  very  moment  when  his  whole  being  yearned 
for  her. 

She  wrote  that,  owing  to  her  duties,  she  would  be 
unable  to  see  him  till  three  that  afternoon;  and  he  had 
still  six  hours  to  consume  before  their  meeting.  But  in 
spirit  they  had  met  already — they  were  one  in  an  in- 
tensity of  communion  which,  as  he  strode  northward 
along  the  bright  crowded  thoroughfare,  seemed  to 
gather  up  the  whole  world  into  one  throbbing  point  of 
life. 

He  had  a  boyish  wish  to  keep  the  secret  of  his  happi- 
ness to  himself,  not  to  let  Mr.  Langhope  or  Mrs-  An- 
sell  know  of  his  meeting  with  Justine  till  it  was  over; 
and  after  twice  measuring  the  length  of  the  Park  he 
turned  in  at  one  of  the  little  wooden  restaurants  which 
were  beginning  to  unshutter  themselves  in  anticipation 
of  spring  custom.  If  only  he  could  have  seen  Justine 
that  morning!  If  he  could  have  brought  her  there, 
and  they  could  have  sat  opposite  each  other,  in  the 
[i  610  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

bare  empty  room,  with  sparrows  bustling  and  twitter- 
ing in  the  lilacs  against  the  open  window!  The  room 
was  ugly  enough — but  how  she  would  have  delighted 
in  the  delicate  green  of  the  near  slopes,  and  the  pur- 
plish haze  of  the  woods  beyond!  She  took  a  childish 
pleasure  in  such  small  adventures,  and  had  the  knack 
of  giving  a  touch  of  magic  to  their  most  commonplace 
details.  Anaherst,  as  he  finished  his  cold  beef  and  in- 
different eggs,  found  himself  boyishly  planning  to  bring 
her  back  there  the  next  day.  .  . 

Then,  over  the  coffee,  he  re-read  her  letter. 

The  address  she  gave  was  that  of  a  small  private  hos- 
pital, and  she  explained  that  she  would  have  to  receive 
him  in  the  public  parlour,  which  at  that  hour  was  open 
to  other  visitors.  As  the  time  approached,  the  thought 
that  they  might  not  be  alone  when  they  met  became 
insufferable;  and  he  determined,  if  he  found  any  one 
else  in  possession  of  the  parlour,  to  wait  in  the  hall,  and 
meet  her  as  she  came  down  the  stairs. 

He  continued  to  elaborate  this  plan  as  he  walked 
back  slowly  through  the  Park,  He  had  timed  himself 
to  reach  the  hospital  a  little  before  three;  but  though  it 
lacked  five  minutes  to  the  hour  when  he  entered  the 
parlour,  two  women  were  already  seated  in  one  of  its 
windows.  They  looked  around  as  he  came  in,  evidently 
as  much  annoyed  by  his  appearance  as  he  had  been  to 
find  them  there.  The  older  of  the  two  showed  a  sallow 
[611  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

middle-aged  face  beneath  her  limp  crape  veil;  the  other 
was  a  slight  tawdry  creature,  with  nodding  feathers, 
and  innumerable  chains  and  bracelets  which  she  fin- 
gered ceaselessly  as  she  talked. 

They  eyed  Amherst  with  resentment,  and  then  turned 
away,  continuing  their  talk  in  low  murmurs,  while  he 
seated  himself  at  the  marble-topped  table  littered  with 
torn  magazines.  Now  and  then  the  younger  woman's 
voice  rose  in  a  shrill  staccato,  and  a  phrase  or  two 
floated  over  to  him.  "She'd  simply  worked  herself  to 
death — the  nurse  told  me  so.  .  .  She  expects  to  go 
home  in  another  week,  though  how  she's  going  to  stand 
the  fatigue —  "  and  then,  after  an  inaudible  answer: 
"It's  all  his  fault,  and  if  I  was  her  I  wouldn't  go  back 
to  him  for  anything!" 

"Oh,  Cora,  he's  real  sorry  now,"  the  older  woman 
protestingly  murmured;  but  the  other,  unappeased,  re- 
joined with  ominously  nodding  plumes :  "  You  see — 
if  they  do  make  it  up,  it'll  never  be  the  same  between 
them!" 

Amherst  started  up  nervously,  and  as  he  did  so  the 
clock  struck  three,  and  he  opened  the  door  and  passed 
out  into  the  hall.  It  was  paved  with  black  and  white 
marble;  the  walls  were  washed  in  a  dull  yellowish  tint, 
and  the  prevalent  odour  of  antiseptics  was  mingled  with 
a  stale  smell  of  cooking.  At  the  back  rose  a  straight 
staircase  carpeted  with  brass-bound  India-rubber,  like 
[  612] 


a  ship's  companion-way;  and  down  that  staircase  she 
would  come  in  a  moment — he  fancied  he  heard  her  step 
now.  .  . 

But  the  step  was  that  of  an  elderly  black-gowned 
woman  in  a  cap — the  matron  probably. 

She  glanced  at  Amherst  in  surprise,  and  asked:  "Are 
you  waiting  for  some  one  ?  " 

He  made  a  motion  of  assent,  and  she  opened  the  par- 
lour door,  saying:  "Please  walk  in." 

"May  I  not  wait  out  here?"  he  urged. 

She  looked  at  him  more  attentively.  "Why,  no, 
I'm  afraid  not.  You'll  find  the  papers  and  magazines 
in  here." 

Mildly  but  firmly  she  drove  him  in  before  her,  and 
closing  the  door,  advanced  to  the  two  women  in  the 
window.  Amherst's  hopes  leapt  up:  perhaps  she  had 
come  to  fetch  the  visitors  upstairs!  He  strained  his 
ears  to  catch  what  was  being  said,  and  while  he  was 
thus  absorbed  the  door  opened,  and  turning  at  the 
sound  he  found  himself  face  to  face  with  his  wife. 

He  had1  not  reflected  that  Justine  would  be  in  her 
nurse's  dress;  and  the  sight  of  the  dark  blue  uniform  and 
small  white  cap,  in  which  he  had  never  seen  her  since 
their  first  meeting  in  the  Hope  Hospital,  obliterated  all 
bitter  and  unhappy  memories,  and  gave  him  the  illusion 
of  passing  back  at  once  into  the  clear  air  of  their  early 
friendship.  Then  he  looked  at  her  and  remembered. 

[613] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

He  noticed  that  she  had  grown  thinner  than  ever, 
or  rather  that  her  thinness,  which  had  formerly  had  a 
healthy  reed-like  strength,  now  suggested  fatigue  and 
languor.  And  her  face  was  spent,  extinguished — the 
very  eyes  were  lifeless.  All  her  vitality  seemed  to  have 
withdrawn  itself  into  the  arch  of  dense  black  hair  which 
still  clasped  her  forehead  like  the  noble  metal  of  some 
antique  bust. 

The  sight  stirred  him  with  a  deeper  pity,  a  more 
vehement  compunction;  but  the  impulse  to  snatch  her 
to  him,  and  seek  his  pardon  on  her  lips,  was  paralyzed 
by  the  sense  that  the  three  women  in  the  window  had 
stopped  talking  and  turned  their  heads  toward  the  door. 

He  held  his  hand  out,  and  Justine's  touched  it  for  a 
moment;  then  he  said  in  a  low  voice:  "Is  there  no 
other  place  where  I  can  see  you  ? " 

She  made  a  negative  gesture.  "I  am  afraid  not  to- 
day." 

Ah,  her  deep  sweet  voice — how  completely  his  ear 
had  lost  the  sound  of  it! 

She  looked  doubtfully  about  the  room,  and  pointed 
to  a  sofa  at  the  end  farthest  from  the  windows. 

"Shall  we  sit  there?"  she  said. 

He  followed  her  in  silence,  and  they  sat  down  side  by 
side.     The  matron  had  drawn  up  a  chair  and  resumed 
her  whispered  conference  with  the  women  in  the  win- 
dow.    Between   the   two   groups   stretched    the    bare 
[614] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

length  of  the  room,  broken  only  by  a  few  arm-chairs 
of  stained  wood,  and  the  marble-topped  table  covered 
with  magazines. 

The  impossibility  of  giving  free  rein  to  his  feelings 
developed  in  Amherst  an  unwonted  intensity  of  per- 
ception, as  though  a  sixth  sense  had  suddenly  emerged 
to  take  the  place  of  those  he  could  not  use.  And  with 
this  new-made  faculty  he  seemed  to  gather  up,  and 
absorb  into  himself,  as  he  had  never  done  in  their 
hours  of  closest  communion,  every  detail  of  his  wife's 
person,  of  her  face  and  hands  and  gestures.  He  no- 
ticed how  her  full  upper  lids,  of  the  tint  of  yellowish 
ivory,  had  a  slight  bluish  discolouration,  and  how  little 
thread-like  blue  veins  ran  across  her  temples  to  the 
roots  of  her  hair.  The  emaciation  of  her  face,  and  the 
hollow  shades  beneath  her  cheek-bones,  made  her 
mouth  seem  redder  and  fuller,  though  a  little  line  on 
each  side,  where  it  joined  the  cheek,  gave  it  a  tragic 
droop.  And  her  hands!  When  her  fingers  met  his 
he  recalled  having  once  picked  up,  in  the  winter  woods, 
the  little  feather-light  skeleton  of  a  frozen  bird — and 
that  was  what  her  touch  was  like. 

And  it  was  he  who  had  brought  her  to  this  by  his 
cruelty,  his  obtuseness,  his  base  readiness  to  believe  the 
worst  of  her!  He  did  not  want  to  pour  himself  out  in 
self-accusation — that  seemed  too  easy  a  way  of  escape. 
He  wanted  simply  to  take  her  in  his  arms,  to  ask  her 
[615] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

to  give  him  one  more  chance — and  then  to  show  her! 
And  all  the  while  he  was  paralyzed  by  the  group  in  the 
window. 

"Can't  we  go  outi  I  must  speak  to  you,"  he  began 
again  nervously. 

"Not  this  afternoon — the  doctor  is  coming.  To- 
morrow  

"I  can't  wait  for  tomorrow!" 

She  made  a  faint,  imperceptible  gesture,  which  read 
to  his  eyes:  "You've  waited  a  whole  year." 

"Yes,  I  know,"  he  returned,  still  constrained  by  the 
necessity  of  muffling  his  voice,  of  perpetually  measuring 
the  distance  between  themselves  and  the  window.  "I 
know  what  you  might  say — don't  you  suppose  I've  said 
it  to  myself  a  million  times?  But  I  didn't  know — I 
couldn't  imagine " 

She  interrupted  him  with  a  rapid  movement  "  What 
do  you  know  now?" 

"What  you  promised  Langhope " 

She  turned  her  startled  eyes  on  him,  and  he  saw  the 
blood  run  flame-like  under  her  skin.  "But  he  prom- 
ised not  to  speak!"  she  cried. 

"He  hasn't — to  me.  But  such  things  make  them- 
selves known.  Should  you  have  been  content  to  go 
on  in  that  way  forever  ?  " 

She  raised  her  head  and  her  eyes  rested  in  his.     "If 
you  were,"  she  answered  simply. 
[  616] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Justine!" 

Again  she  checked  him  with  a  silencing  motion. 
"Please  tell  me  just  what  has  happened." 

"Not  now — there's  too  much  else  to  say.  And 
nothing  matters  except  that  I'm  with  you." 

"But  Mr.  Langhope " 

"He  asks  you  to  come.  You're  to  see  Cicely  to- 
morrow." 

Her  lower  lip  trembled  a  little,  and  a  tear  flowed 
over  and  hung  on  her  lashes. 

"But  what  does  all  that  matter  now?  We're  to- 
gether after  this  horrible  year,"  he  insisted. 

She  looked  at  him  again.  "But  what  is  really 
changed?" 

"Everything — everything!  Not  changed,  I  mean — 
just  gone  back." 

"To  where.  .  .  we  were.  .  .  before?"  she  whis- 
pered; and  he  whispered  back:  "To  where  we  were 
before." 

There  was  a  scraping  of  chairs  on  the  floor,  and 
with  a  sense  of  release  Amherst  saw  that  the  colloquy 
in  the  window  was  over. 

The  two  visitors,  gathering  their  wraps  about  them, 
moved  slowly  across  the  room,  still  talking  to  the 
matron  in  excited  undertones,  through  which,  as  they 
neared  the  threshold,  the  younger  woman's  staccato 
agjin  broke  out. 

[617] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"I  tell  you,  if  she  does  go  back  to  him,  it'll  never 
be  the  same  between  them!" 

"Oh,  Cora,  I  wouldn't  say  that,"  the  other  ineffectu- 
ally wailed;  then  they  moved  toward  the  door,  and  a 
moment  later  it  had  closed  on  them. 

Amherst  turned  to  his  wife  with  outstretched  arms. 
"Say  you  forgive  me,  Justine!" 

She  held  back  a  little  from  his  entreating  hands,  not 
reproachfully,  but  as  if  with  a  last  scruple  for  himself. 

"There's  nothing  left.  .  .  of  the  horror?"  she  asked 
below  her  breath. 

"To  be  without  you — that's  the  only  horror!" 

"You're  sure ?" 

"Sure!" 

"It's  just  the  same  to  you.  .  .  just  as  it  was.  .  .  be- 
fore?" 

"Just  the  same,  Justine!" 

"It's  not  for  myself,  but  you." 

"Then,  for  me — never  speak  of  it!"  he  implored. 

"Because  it's  not  the  same,  then?"  leapt  from  her. 

"Because  it's  wiped  out — because  it's  never  been!'* 

"Never?" 

"Never!" 

He  felt  her  yield  to  him  at  that,  and  under  his  eyes,  close 
under  his  lips,  was  her  face  at  last.  But  as  they  kissed  they 
heard  the  handle  of  the  door  turn,  and  drew  apart  quickly, 
her  hand  lingering  in  his  under  the  fold  of  her  dress. 
[618] 


A  nurse  looked  in,  dressed  in  the  white  uniform  and 
pointed  cap  of  the  hospital.  Amherst  fancied  that  she 
smiled  a  little  as  she  saw  them. 

"Miss  Brent — the  doctor  wants  you  to  come  right 
up  and  give  the  morphine." 

The  door  shut  again  as  Justine  rose  to  her  feet. 
Amherst  remained  seated — he  had  made  no  motion  to 
retain  her  hand  as  it  slipped  from  him. 

"I'm  coming,"  she  called  out  to  the  retreating  nurse; 
then  she  turned  slowly  and  saw  her  husband's  face. 

"I  must  go,"  she  said  in  a  low  tone. 

Her  eyes  met  his  for  a  moment;  but  he  looked  away 
again  as  he  stood  up  and  reached  for  his  hat. 

"Tomorrow,  then "  he  said,  without  attempting 

to  detain  her. 

"Tomorrow?" 

"You  must  come  away  from  here — you  must  come 
home,"  he  repeated  mechanically. 

She  made  no  answer,  and  he  held  his  hand  out  and 
took  hers.  "Tomorrow,"  he  said,  drawing  her  toward 
him;  and  their  lips  met  again,  but  not  in  the  same  kiss. 

XLIII 

JUNE  again  at  Hanaford — and  Cicely's  birthday. 
The  anniversary  was  to  coincide,  this  year,  with 
the  opening  of  the  old  house  at  Hopewood,  as  a  kind  of 
[  619  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

pleasure-palace — gymnasium,  concert-hall  and  museum 
— for  the  recreation  of  the  mill-hands. 

The  idea  had  first  come  to  Amherst  on  the  winter 
afternoon  when  Bessy  Westmore  had  confessed  her 
love  for  him  under  the  snow-laden  trees  of  Hopewood. 
Even  then  the  sense  that  his  personal  happiness  was 
enlarged  and  secured  by  its  promise  of  happiness  to 
others  had  made  him  wish  that  the  scene  associated 
with  the  opening  of  his  new  life  should  be  made  to 
commemorate  a  corresponding  change  in  the  fortunes 
of  Westmore.  But  when  the  control  of  the  mills  passed 
into  his  hands  other  and  more  necessary  improvements 
pressed  upon  him;  and  it  was  not  till  now  that  the 
financial  condition  of  the  company  had  permitted  the 
execution  of  his  plan. 

Justine,  on  her  return  to  Hanaford,  had  found  the 
work  already  in  progress,  and  had  been  told  by  her 
husband  that  he  was  carrying  out  a  projected  scheme 
of  Bessy's.  She  had  felt  a  certain  surprise,  but  had 
concluded  that  the  plan  in  question  dated  back  to  the 
early  days  of  his  first  marriage,  when,  in  his  wife's  eyes, 
his  connection  with  the  mills  still  invested  them  with 
interest 

Since  Justine  had  come  back  to  her  husband,  both 

had  tacitly  avoided  all  allusions  to  the  past,  and  the 

recreation-house  at  Hopewood  being,  as  she  divined, 

in  some  sort  an  expiatory  offering  to  Bessy's  plaintive 

[  620  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

shade,  she  had  purposely  refrained  from  questioning 
Amherst  about  its  progress,  and  had  simply  approved 
the  plans  he  submitted  to  her. 

Fourteen  months  had  passed  since  her  return,  and 
now,  as  she  sat  beside  her  husband  in  the  carriage  which 
was  conveying  them  to  Hopewood,  she  said  to  herself 
that  her  life  had  at  last  fallen  into  what  promised  to  be 
its  final  shape — that  as  things  now  were  they  would 
probably  be  to  the  end.  And  outwardly  at  least  they 
were  what  she  and  Amherst  had  always  dreamed  of 
their  being.  Westmore  prospered  under  the  new  rule. 
The  seeds  of  life  they  had  sown  there  were  springing 
up  in  a  promising  growth  of  bodily  health  and  mental 
activity,  and  above  all  in  a  dawning  social  conscious- 
ness. The  mill-hands  were  beginning  to  understand 
the  meaning  of  their  work,  in  its  relation  to  their  own 
lives  and  to  the  larger  economy.  And  outwardly,  also, 
the  new  growth  was  showing  itself  in  the  humanized 
aspect  of  the  place.  Amherst's  young  maples  were  tall 
enough  now  to  cast  a  shade  on  the  grass -bordered 
streets;  and  the  well-kept  turf,  the  bright  cottage  gar- 
dens, the  new  central  group  of  library,  hospital  and 
club-house,  gave  to  the  mill-village  the  hopeful  air  of  a 
"rising"  residential  suburb. 

In  the  bright  June  light,  behind  their  fresh  green 
mantle  of  trees  and  creepers,  even  the  factory  buildings 
looked  less  stern  and  prison -like  than  formerly;  and 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

the  turfing  and  planting  of  the  adjoining  river-banks 
had  transformed  a  waste  of  foul  mud  and  refuse  into 
a  little  park  where  the  operatives  might  refresh  them- 
selves at  midday. 

Yes — Westmore  was  alive  at  last:  the  dead  city  of 
which  Justine  had  once  spoken  had  risen  from  its  grave, 
and  its  blank  face  had  taken  on  a  meaning.  As  Justine 
glanced  at  her  husband  she  saw  that  the  same  thought 
was  in  his  mind.  However  achieved,  at  whatever  cost 
of  personal  misery  and  error,  the  work  of  awakening  and 
freeing  Westmore  was  done,  and  that  work  had  justified 
itself. 

She  looked  from  Amherst  to  Cicely,  who  sat  opposite, 
eager  and  rosy  in  her  mourning  frock — for  Mr.  Lang- 
hope  had  died  some  two  months  previously — and  as 
intent  as  her  step-parents  on  the  scene  before  her. 
Cicely  was  old  enough  now  to  regard  her  connection 
with  Westmore  as  something  more  than  a  nursery  game. 
She  was  beginning  to  learn  a  great  deal  about  the  mills, 
and  to  understand,  in  simple,  friendly  ways,  something 
of  her  own  relation  to  them.  The  work  and  play  of 
the  children,  the  interests  and  relaxations  provided  for 
their  elders,  had  been  gradually  explained  to  her  by 
Justine,  and  she  knew  that  this  shining  tenth  birthday 
of  hers  was  to  throw  its  light  as  far  as  the  clouds  of 
factory-smoke  extended. 

As  they  mounted  the  slope  to  Hopewood,  the  spacious 
[  622  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

white  building,  with  its  enfolding  colonnades,  its  broad 
terraces  and  tennis-courts,  shone  through  the  trees  like 
some  bright  country-house  adorned  for  its  master's 
home-coming;  and  Amherst  and  his  wife  might  have 
been  driving  up  to  the  house  which  had  been  built  to 
shelter  their  wedded  happiness.  The  thought  flashed 
across  Justine  as  their  carriage  climbed  the  hill.  She 
was  as  much  absorbed  as  Amherst  in  the  welfare  of 
Westmore,  it  had  become  more  and  more,  to  both,  the 
refuge  in  which  their  lives  still  met  and  mingled ;  but  for 
a  moment,  as  they  paused  before  the  flower-decked 
porch,  and  he  turned  to  help  her  from  the  carriage,  it  oc- 
curred to  her  to  wonder  what  her  sensations  would  have 
been  if  he  had  been  bringing  her  home — to  a  real  home 
of  their  own — instead  of  accompanying  her  to  another 
philanthropic  celebration.  But  what  need  had  they  of 
a  real  home,  when  they  no  longer  had  any  real  life  of 
their  own  ?  Nothing  was  left  of  that  secret  inner  union 
which  had  so  enriched  and  beautified  their  outward 
lives.  Since  Justine's  return  to  Hanaford  they  had 
entered,  tacitly,  almost  unconsciously,  into  a  new  rela- 
tion to  each  other:  a  relation  in  which  their  personali- 
ties were  more  and  more  merged  in  their  common  work, 
so  that,  as  it  were,  they  met  only  by  avoiding  each 
other. 

From  the  first,  Justine  had  accepted  this  as  inevita- 
ble;   just  as  she  had  understood,  when  Amherst  had 
[  623  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

sought  her  out  in  New  York,  that  his  remaining  at 
Westmore,  which  had  once  been  contingent  on  her 
leaving  him,  now  depended  on  her  willingness  to  return 
and  take  up  their  former  life. 

She  accepted  the  last  condition  as  she  had  accepted 
the  other,  pledged  to  the  perpetual  expiation  of  an  act 
for  which,  in  the  abstract,  she  still  refused  to  hold  her- 
self to  blame.  But  life  is  not  a  matter  of  abstract  prin- 
ciples, but  a  succession  of  pitiful  compromises  with  fate, 
of  concessions  to  old  tradition,  old  beliefs,  old  charities 
and  frailties.  That  was  what  her  act  had  taught  her 
— that  was  the  word  of  the  gods  to  the  mortal  who  had 
laid  a  hand  on  their  bolts.  And  she  had  humbled  her- 
self to  accept  the  lesson,  seeing  human  relations  at  last 
as  a  tangled  and  deep-rooted  growth,  a  dark  forest 
through  which  the  idealist  cannot  cut  his  straight  path 
without  hearing  at  each  stroke  the  cry  of  the  severed 
branch:  "Why  woundest  thou  me?" 

The  lawns  leading  up  to  the  house  were  already 
sprinkled  with  holiday-makers,  while  along  the  avenue 
came  the  rolling  of  wheels,  the  throb  of  motor-cars; 
and  Justine,  with  Cicely  beside  her,  stood  in  the  wide 
hall  to  receive  the  incoming  throng,  in  which  Hanaford 
society  was  indiscriminately  mingled  with  the  opera- 
tives in  their  Sunday  best. 

While  his  wife  welcomed  the  new  arrivals,  Amherst, 
[  624  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

supported  by  some  young  Westmore  cousins,  was  guid 
ing  them  into  the  concert-hall,  where  he  was  to  say  a 
word  on  the  uses  of  the  building  before  declaring  it 
open  for  inspection.  And  presently  Justine  and  Cicely, 
summoned  by  Westy  Gaines,  made  their  way  through 
the  rows  of  seats  to  a  corner  near  the  platform.  Her 
husband  was  there  already,  with  Halford  Gaines  and 
a  group  of  Hanaford  dignitaries,  and  just  below  themi 
sat  Mrs.  Gaines  and  her  daughters,  the  Harry  Dressels, 
and  Amherst's  radiant  mother. 

As  Justine  passed  between  them,  she  wondered  how 
much  they  knew  of  the  events  which  had  wrought  so 
profound  and  permanent  change  in  her  life.  She  had 
never  known  how  Hanaford'  explained  her  absence  or 
what  comments  it  had  made  on  her  return.  But  she 
saw  to-day  more  clearly  than  ever  that  Amherst  had 
become  a  power  among  his  townsmen,  and  that  if  they 
were  still  blind  to  the  inner  meaning  of  his  work,  its 
practical  results  were  beginning  to  impress  them  pro- 
foundly. Hanaford 's  sociological  creed  was  largely 
based  on  commercial  considerations,  and  Amherst  had 
won  Hanaford 's  esteem  by  the  novel  feat  of  defying  its 
economic  principles  and  snatching  success  out  of  his 
defiance. 

And  now  he  had  advanced  a  step  or  two  in  front  of 
the  "representative"  semi-circle  on  the  platform,  and 
was  beginning  to  speak. 

[  625  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

Justine  did  not  hear  his  first  words.  She  was  looking 
up  at  him,  trying  to  see  him  with  the  eyes  of  the  crowd, 
and  wondering  what  manner  of  man  he  would  have 
seemed  to  her  if  she  had  known  as  little  as  they  did  of 
his  inner  history. 

He  held  himself  straight,  the  heavy  locks  thrown  back 
from  his  forehead,  one  hand  resting  on  the  table  beside 
him,  the  other  grasping  a  folded  blue-print  which  the 
architect  of  the  building  had  just  advanced  to  give  him. 
As  he  stood  there,  Justine  recalled  her  first  sight  of  him 
in  the  Hope  Hospital,  five  years  earlier — was  it  only 
five  years?  They  had  dealt  deep  strokes  to  his  face, 
hollowing  the  eye-sockets,  accentuating  the  strong 
modelling  of  nose  and  chin,  fixing  the  lines  between  the 
brows;  but  every  touch  had  a  meaning — it  was  not  the 
languid  hand  of  time  which  had  remade  his  features, 
but  the  sharp  chisel  of  thought  and  action. 

She  roused  herself  suddenly  to  the  consciousness  of 
what  he  was  saying. 

"For  the  idea  of  this  building — of  a  building  dedi- 
cated to  the  recreation  of  Westmore — is  not  new  in  my 
mind;  but  while  it  remained  there  as  a  mere  idea,  it 
had  already,  without  my  knowledge,  taken  definite 
shape  in  the  thoughts  of  the  owner  of  Westmore." 

There  was  a  slight  drop  in  his  voice  as  he  designated 
Bessy,  and  he  waited  a  moment  before  continuing:  "It 
was  not  till  after  the  death  of  my  first  wife  that  I  learned 
[  626  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

of  her  intention — that  I  found  by  accident,  among  her 
papers,  this  carefully-studied  plan  for  a  pleasure-house 
at  Hopewood." 

He  paused  again,  and  unrolling  the  blue-print,  held 
it  up  before  his  audience. 

"You  cannot,  at  this  distance,"  he  went  on,  "see  all 
the  admirable  details  of  her  plan;  see  how  beautifully 
they  were  imagined,  how  carefully  and  intelligently 
elaborated.  She  who  conceived  them  longed  to  see 
beauty  everywhere — it  was  her  dearest  wish  to  bestow 
it  on  her  people  here.  And  her  ardent  imagination 
outran  the  bounds  of  practical  possibility.  We  cannot 
give  you,  in  its  completeness,  the  beautiful  thing  she 
had  imagined — the  great  terraces,  the  marble  porches, 
the  fountains,  lily-tanks,  and  cloisters.  But  you  will 
see  that,  wherever  it  was  possible — though  in  humbler 
materials,  and  on  a  smaller  scale — we  have  faithfully 
followed  her  design ;  and  when  presently  you  go  through 
this  building,  and  when,  hereafter,  you  find  health  and 
refreshment  and  diversion  here,  I  ask  you  to  remember 
the  beauty  she  dreamed  of  giving  you,  and  to  let  the 
thought  of  it  make  her  memory  beautiful  among  you 
and  among  your  children.  .  ." 

Justine  had  listened  with  deepening  amazement  She 
was  seated  so  close  to  her  husband  that  she  had  recog- 
nized the  blue-print  the  moment  he  unrolled  it.  There 
was  no  mistaking  its  origin — it  was  simply  the  plan  of 
[  627  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

the  gymnasium  which  Bessy  had  intended  to  build  at 
Lynbrook,  and  which  she  had  been  constrained  to 
abandon  owing  to  her  husband's  increased  expenditure 
at  the  mills.  But  how  was  it  possible  that  Amherst 
knew  nothing  of  the  original  purpose  of  the  plans,  and 
by  what  mocking  turn  of  events  had  a  project  devised 
in  deliberate  defiance  of  his  wishes,  and  intended  to 
declare  his  wife's  open  contempt  for  them,  been  trans- 
formed into  a  Utopian  vision  for  the  betterment  of  the 
Westmore  operatives? 

A  wave  of  anger  swept  over  Justine  at  this  last  deri- 
sive stroke  of  fate.  It  was  grotesque  and  pitiable  that 
a  man  like  Amherst  should  create  out  of  his  regrets 
a  being  who  had  never  existed,  and  then  ascribe  to  her 
feelings  and  actions  of  which  the  real  woman  had  again 
and  again  proved  herself  incapable! 

Ah,  no,  Justine  had  suffered  enough — but  to  have 
this  imaginary  Bessy  called  from  the  grave,  dressed  in 
a  semblance  of  self-devotion  and  idealism,  to  see  her 
petty  impulses  of  vindictiveness  disguised  as  the  mo- 
tions of  a  lofty  spirit — it  was  as  though  her  small  mali- 
cious ghost  had  devised  this  way  of  punishing  the  wife 
who  had  taken  her  place! 

Justine  had  suffered  enough — suffered  deliberately 

and  unstintingly,  paying  the  full  price  of  her  error,  not 

seeking  to  evade  its  least  consequence.     But  no  sane 

judgment  could  ask  her  to  sit  quiet  under  this  last  hal- 

[  628  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

lucination.  What!  This  unreal  woman,  this  phantom 
that  Amherst's  uneasy  imagination  had  evoked,  was  to 
come  between  himself  and  her,  to  supplant  her  first  as 
his  wife,  and  then  as  his  f ellow- worker  ?  Why  should 
she  not  cry  out  the  truth  to  him,  defend  herself  against 
the  dead  who  came  back  to  rob  her  of  such  wedded 
peace  as  was  hers  ?  She  had  only  to  tell  the  true  story 
of  the  plans  to  lay  poor  Bessy's  ghost  forever! 

The  confused  throbbing  impulses  within  her  were 
stifled  under  a  long  burst  of  applause — then  she  saw 
Westy  Gaines  at  her  side  again,  and  understood  that 
he  had  come  to  lead  Cicely  to  the  platform.  For  a 
moment  she  clung  jealously  to  the  child's  hand,  hardly 
aware  of  what  she  did,  feeling  only  that  she  was  being 
thrust  farther  and  farther  into  the  background  of  the 
life  she  had  helped  to  call  out  of  chaos.  Then  a  con- 
trary impulse  moved  her.  She  gently  freed  Cicely's 
hand,  and  a  moment  later,  as  she  sat  with  bent  head 
and  throbbing  breast,  she  heard  the  child's  treble 
piping  out  above  her: 

"In  my  mother's  name,  I  give  this  house  to  West- 
more." 

Applause  again — and  then  Justine  found  herself  en- 
veloped in  a  general  murmur  of  compliment  and  con- 
gratulation. Mr.  Amherst  had  spoken  admirably — a 
"beautiful  tribute — "  ah,  he  had  done  poor  Bessy  jus- 
tice! And  to  think  that  till  now  Hanaford  had  never 
[  629  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

fully  known  how  she  had  the  welfare  of  the  mills  at 
heart — how  it  was  really  only  her  work  that  he  was 
carrying  on  there!  Well,  he  had  made  that  perfectly 
clear — and  no  doubt  Cicely  was  being  taught  to  follow 
in  her  mother's  footsteps:  everyone  had  noticed  how 
her  step-father  was  associating  her  with  the  work  at 
the  mills.  And  his  little  speech  would,  as  it  were,  con- 
secrate the  child's  relation  to  that  work,  make  it  appear 
to  her  as  the  continuance  of  a  beautiful,  a  sacred 
tradition.  .  . 

And  now  it  was  over.  The  building  had  been  in- 
spected, the  operatives  had  dispersed,  the  Hanaford 
company  had  rolled  off  down  the  avenue,  Cicely,  among 
them,  driving  away  tired  and  happy  in  Mrs.  Dressel's 
victoria,  and  Amherst  and  his  wife  were  alone. 

Amherst,  after  bidding  good-bye  to  his  last  guests, 
had  gone  back  to  the  empty  concert-room  to  fetch 
the  blue-print  lying  on  the  platform.  He  came  back 
with  it,  between  the  uneven  rows  of  empty  chairs, 
and  joined  Justine,  who  stood  waiting  in  the  hall.  His 
face  was  slightly  flushed,  and  his  eyes  had  the  light 
which  in  happy  moments  burned  through  their  veil  of 
thought. 

He  laid  his  hand  on  his  wife's  arm,  and  drawing  her 
toward  a  table  spread  out  the  blueprint  before  her. 

"You  haven't  seen  this,  have  you?"  he  said. 
[  630  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

She  looked  down  at  the  plan  without  answering, 
reading  in  the  left-hand  corner  the  architect's  conven- 
tional inscription:  "Swimming-tank  and  gymnasium 
designed  for  Mrs.  John  Amherst." 

Amherst  looked  up,  perhaps  struck  by  her  silence. 

"But  perhaps  you  have  seen  it — at  Lynbrook?  H 
must  have  been  done  while  you  were  there." 

The  quickened  throb  of  her  blood  rushed  to  her  brain 
like  a  signal.  "Speak — speak  now!"  the  signal  com- 
manded. 

Justine  continued  to  look  fixedly  at  the  plan.  "Yes, 
I  have  seen  it,"  she  said  at  length. 

"At  Lynbrook?" 

"At  Lynbrook." 

"She  showed  it  to  you,  I  suppose — while  I  was 
away  ?  " 

Justine  hesitated  again.    "Yes,  while  you  were  away." 

"And  did  she  tell  you  anything  about  it,  go  into 
details  about  her  wishes,  her  intentions  ?  " 

Now  was  the  moment — now!  As  her  lips  parted  she 
looked  up  at  her  husband.  The  illumination  still  lin- 
gered on  his  face — and  it  was  the  face  she  loved.  He 
was  waiting  eagerly  for  her  next  word. 

"No,  I  heard  no  details.  I  merely  saw  the  plan 
lying  there." 

She  saw  his  look  of  disappointment.  "She  never 
told  you  about  it?" 

[  631  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"No — she  never  told  me." 

It  was  best  so,  after  all.  She  understood  that  now. 
It  was  now  at  last  that  she  was  paying  her  full  price. 

Amherst  rolled  up  the  plan  with  a  sigh  and  pushed 
it  into  the  drawer  of  the  table.  It  struck  her  that  he 
too  had  the  look  of  one  who  has  laid  a  ghost.  He 
turned  to  her  and  drew  her  hand  through  his  arm. 

"You're  tired,  dear.  You  ought  to  have  driven  back 
with  the  others,"  he  said. 

"No,  I  would  rather  stay  with  you." 

"You  want  to  drain  this  good  day  to  the  dregs,  as  I 
do?" 

"Yes,"  she  murmured,  drawing  her  hand  away. 

"It  is  a  good  day,  isn't  it?"  he  continued,  looking 
about  him  at  the  white-panelled  walls,  the  vista  of 
large  bright  rooms  seen  through  the  folding  doors. 
"I  feel  as  if  we  had  reached  a  height,  somehow — a 
height  where  one  might  pause  and  draw  breath  for  the 
next  climb.  Don't  you  feel  that  too,  Justine?" 

"Yes— I  feel  it." 

"Do  you  remember  once,  long  ago — one  day  when 
you  and  I  and  Cicely  went  on  a  picnic  to  hunt  orchids 
—how  we  got  talking  of  the  one  best  moment  in  life — 
the  moment  when  one  wanted  most  to  stop  the  clock  ?  " 

The  colour  rose  in  her  face  while  he  spoke.     It  was 
a  long  time  since  he  had  referred  to  the  early  days  of 
their  friendship — the  days  before.  .  . 
[  632  ] 


THE  FRUIT  OF  THE  TREE 

"Yes,  I  remember,"  she  said. 

"And  do  you  remember  how  we  said  that  it  was 
with  most  of  us  as  it  was  with  Faust?  That  the  mo- 
ment one  wanted  to  hold  fast  to  was  not,  in  most  lives, 
the  moment  of  keenest  personal  happiness,  but  the 
other  kind — the  kind  that  would  have  seemed  grey  and 
colourless  at  first:  the  moment  when  the  meaning  of 
life  began  to  come  out  from  the  mists — when  one  could 
look  out  at  last  over  the  marsh  one  had  drained  ?  " 

A  tremor  ran  through  Justine.  "It  was  you  who  said 
that,"  she  said,  half-smiling. 

"But  didn't  you  feel  it  with  me  ?     Don't  you  now ?" 

"Yes — I  do  now,"  she  murmured. 

He  came  close  to  her,  and  taking  her  hands  in  his, 
kissed  them  one  after  the  other. 

"Dear,"  he  said,  "let  us  go  out  and  look  at  the  marsh 
we  have  drained." 

He  turned  and  led  her  through  the  open  doorway 
to  the  terrace  above  the  river.  The  sun  was  setting 
behind  the  wooded  slopes  of  Hope  wood,  and  the  trees 
about  the  house  stretched  long  blue  shadows  across  the 
lawn.  Beyond  them  rose  the  smoke  of  Westmore. 


[  633  ] 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


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